What to See in Hel - Top Sights and Attractions

Coastal Defense Museum of the "Friends of Hel" Association - a museum located in Hel, opened in spring 2006, its regulations approved by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski on February 27, 2009. The museum was created on the initiative of the "Military Monuments" section of the "Friends of Hel" Association, thanks to the help and support of the Mayor of Hel and the authorities of the Hel Municipality.

The MOW displays its exhibitions in several renovated buildings of the former German coastal artillery battery "Schleswig Holstein" and at the position no. 4 of the pre-war Heliodor Laskowski battery, which was restored with its own efforts.

In 1940 a battery of three 406 mm caliber guns, which were made for the German battleships of the "H" type planned before the outbreak of war, was installed in Hel and named "Schleswig Holstein". These cannons, after test firing, were moved from Hel to France as the Lindemann battery.

The 406 mm caliber guns are the largest ever installed in the world in stationary batteries. Cannons of this caliber were also used on American Iowa-type battleships, among others. There were guns of larger calibers, but these were on Japanese battleships, railroad guns, guns on tracked chassis (such as the Soviet 2B1 Oka(English) self-propelled mortar) or experimental guns.

Inside the museum there are over 15 permanent exhibitions and numerous exhibits relating to the military history of the Hel Fortified Region - famous for 32 days of defense in 1939 - and the Polish Navy.

The first object is a multi-storey fire control tower with a viewpoint on the top. The second object is the firing position No. 2 (this battery consists of three firing positions) for a 406 mm caliber cannon. The one-level, ground-based firing position consists of a barracks section for 88 sailors, a gigantic cannonade and an ammunition section with four handy magazines - two missile magazines and two propelling charge magazines.

On November 11, 2006, Poland's Independence Day, the board of the Museum of Coastal Defense passed a resolution to name the Museum of Coastal Defense after Commander Zbigniew Przybyszewski, a heroic defender of Hel, innocently executed in 1952 as a result of a fabricated trial before a Stalinist military court.

In 2008, the Museum of Coastal Defense in Hel opened a permanent exhibition dedicated to Capt. Karol Olgierd Borchardt with his apartment called "Seventh Heaven".

On 1 May 2009, a 600 mm gauge narrow gauge railroad was opened on the section from the Bruno stand to the Cesar stand, hauled by a Polish WLs40 locomotive formerly used by the Navy. On 1 May 2013, a second independent section, 700 m long, from the Cesar post to the former ammunition depot - Hel Railway Museum, operated by an analogous locomotive, was opened.

In 2013, the MOW received the use of the sixth and last of the buildings of the former 406 mm Schleswig-Holstein battery. In one of the ammunition magazines of this battery, a new section of the MOW called the Hel Railway Museum was opened in 2013.

On January 1, 2017, by decision of the Board of Directors of the Association "Friends of Hel" on the basis of the Museum of Coastal Defense was created Hel Museum Complex, which consists of: Hel Museum (MH), Conservation Studio, Museum of Coastal Defense (MOW), Hel Railway Museum (MKH) and the position of Bat. H. Laskowski (HL).

The museum is located just before the outskirts of Hel, near the railway-road crossing (parking lots for motorists are located on provincial road No. 216).