Warsaw · on the Vistula
Warsaw Zoo
A Praga-side zoo since 1928 — and the real setting of a wartime rescue that saved roughly 300 lives.
Photo by Aliaksei Lepik on Unsplash
The Warszawskie Ogrody Zoologiczne — Warsaw Zoo — opened on the Praga bank of the Vistula in 1928 and today is, on the surface, an ordinary big-city zoo: roughly 40 hectares, more than 10,000 animals, a full day out for families. Its deeper history is anything but ordinary. During the German occupation, zoo director Jan Żabiński and his wife Antonina used the empty animal enclosures, tunnels, and their own villa on the grounds to hide people fleeing the Holocaust — an act of sustained, quiet courage that saved an estimated 300 lives and later became the basis for Diane Ackerman's book The Zookeeper's Wife and its 2017 film adaptation.
A visit today can be either or both: a straightforward day with the animals, or a stop that includes the Żabiński Villa, now a small museum telling the wartime story in the rooms where it unfolded. Either way, the zoo has carried that history formally into its own identity — since 2023 its official name has honoured the couple directly.
01 · The Wartime Story
The Żabińskis and the People They Hid
Jan Żabiński was a zoologist who had directed the Warsaw Zoo since before the war; his wife Antonina managed the family home on the grounds. When German bombing in September 1939 killed or scattered much of the zoo's animal collection and the occupying authorities later shut the zoo down, the couple were left with something the rest of occupied Warsaw didn't have: a large, semi-private site full of empty enclosures, underground tunnels, and outbuildings, close to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto across the river.
Beginning not long after the occupation began and continuing until the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Jan — active in the Polish resistance and with legitimate professional reasons to move around the ghetto as a pest-control advisor — helped smuggle people out and brought them to the zoo. Antonina sheltered them in the family villa and coordinated safe movement between the animal cages and cellars where people hid, sometimes for days, sometimes for months, before onward routes to safety could be arranged. Their teenage son Ryszard was involved as well. Historians estimate that roughly 300 people passed through this network at some point — the great majority Jews escaping the ghetto, though some were Polish resistance members needing a place to disappear.
In 1965, Yad Vashem recognised Jan and Antonina Żabiński as Righteous Among the Nations, the formal Israeli honour for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Their story remained relatively little known outside Poland until Diane Ackerman's 2007 nonfiction book The Zookeeper's Wife brought it to a much wider audience, followed in 2017 by a film adaptation starring Jessica Chastain and Johan Heldenbergh. The zoo treats the history with evident care rather than spectacle: the family villa, restored and opened as a small guided-tour exhibition in 2015, presents the rooms largely as they were, with the names of some of those sheltered there recorded on its walls.
02 · Visiting Today
What the Zoo Is Like Now
Size and collection
The grounds cover roughly 40 hectares and hold well over 10,000 animals across around 500 species, with dozens of those species part of coordinated European breeding programmes for endangered animals. It's sized and stocked as one of Poland's major zoos rather than a small municipal collection.
A working, rebuilt institution
Nearly the entire prewar animal collection was lost in 1939, and the zoo effectively had to be rebuilt from the ground up after reopening in the late 1940s. What visitors walk through today is almost entirely a postwar and modern institution, even though its footprint on the Praga riverbank has stayed the same since 1928.
The Żabiński Villa
The family home is open as a small guided museum, generally by pre-arranged tour rather than casual walk-in — confirm current access on the zoo's official site before you rely on visiting it the same day as the animal collection.
The name change
Since 1 January 2023, the zoo's official name has been the Antonina and Jan Żabiński Municipal Zoological Garden — a deliberate step by the city to fold the couple's wartime story permanently into the institution's identity rather than leaving it as a side note.
03 · A Day at the Zoo
What to Expect on an Ordinary Visit
Set that history aside for a moment and Warsaw Zoo functions much like any well-run big-city zoo: a network of walking paths looping through wooded, riverside grounds, split roughly by continent and habitat, with pavilions for primates, big cats, and hoofed animals alongside an aviary and reptile house. It skews toward families — pushchair-friendly paths, a playground, and picnic areas make it an easy half-day or full-day out, and school groups are a common sight on weekday mornings.
Because the collection spans some 500 species and well over 10,000 individual animals, no single visit covers everything comfortably; most guides suggest picking two or three zones to focus on rather than trying to see the whole grounds in one pass. As with most zoos in a temperate climate, a handful of exhibits — particularly warm-climate species housed indoors — may run on adjusted hours or partial access during the coldest months, so it's worth checking current conditions if visiting in winter.
The zoo also plays a working role in conservation rather than being purely a display: dozens of its species are part of coordinated European breeding programmes for animals under threat in the wild, a less visible but ongoing extension of the institution's founding mission — one that, in its own quieter way, echoes the same instinct for protection that defined its wartime history.
04 · Nearby
On the Praga Side
06 · Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Warsaw Zoo the same one from The Zookeeper's Wife?
Yes. Diane Ackerman's 2007 book The Zookeeper's Wife, and the 2017 film adaptation starring Jessica Chastain, are both based on the real wartime history of this zoo, its director Jan Żabiński, and his wife Antonina, who used the grounds and their villa to hide people fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto and Nazi persecution between 1939 and 1944.
How many people did the Żabińskis actually save?
Historians and Yad Vashem, which recognised the couple as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965, generally put the number at roughly 300 people sheltered at various points in the zoo's empty animal enclosures, tunnels, and the family's own villa — most of them Jews escaping the Warsaw Ghetto, moved onward to safety as false papers and hiding places elsewhere could be arranged.
Can you visit the Żabiński Villa today?
Yes. The family home has operated since 2015 as a small guided-tour museum on the zoo grounds, furnished to evoke the 1930s and telling the rescue story in the rooms where it happened. Tours are limited and must generally be arranged in advance — check the villa's current visiting details on the zoo's official site before planning a trip around it.
Where is the zoo and how big is it?
The zoo sits on the right (Praga) bank of the Vistula, in the Praga-Północ district, a short walk or tram ride from the river and the Old Town on the opposite bank. It covers roughly 40 hectares and holds well over 10,000 animals across some 500 species, making it one of the larger and more visited zoos in Poland.
Is the zoo's official name different now?
Yes — since January 2023, it has been formally known as the Antonina and Jan Żabiński Municipal Zoological Garden, a renaming that made the couple's wartime role part of the institution's own name rather than just a footnote to its history.
✦ Verify before you go
Sources & official links
We verify prices, hours, and dates against official pages. They change without notice — confirm time-sensitive details at the source before you go.
- Zoo Warszawa (official) — Current opening hours, ticket prices, and visitor information.
- Żabiński Villa — Zoo Warszawa — The official history of the villa and the family's wartime rescue work.
- Yad Vashem — Jan and Antonina Żabiński — The Righteous Among the Nations recognition and archival account.