A large number of original items from the Titanic, the ill-fated ship which sank in the Atlantic in 1912, are on display in an exhibition that opens in Kraków on Friday.
The southern Polish city is yet another stop for Titanic: The Exhibition, a travelling show that has attracted several million people in the United States as well as in European cities such as Stockholm, Barcelona, Belfast, Seville and Bratislava.
The exhibits on view at Kraków’s Forum Hotel include a wide range of personal items belonging to Titanic passengers, such as wedding rings, dinner jackets, comb brushes, playing cards, glasses, photographs and letters. There are also reconstructed sections of the ship’s interiors.
Most of the objects on display have been recovered from the wreck of the ship. Some have been donated by members of the families of the victims of the disaster.
The exhibition also documents the stories of a group of passengers with Polish names such as Ostrowska, Pawłowski and Pawłowicz. The victims of the tragedy included a Polish Roman Catholic priest named Józef Montwiłł, who was travelling to the United States to take over a parish in the state of Massachusetts. He is said to have refused a place on a lifeboat.
The Polish capital Warsaw hosted Titanic: The Exhibition in 2016.
The Titanic sank in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg. The tragedy claimed the lives of 1,495 people. Among the disaster’s 712 survivors was Berek Trembecki, a Polish Jew who worked in London.