Enigma Cipher Centre

The Enigma Cipher Centre opened in 2021 in a building adjoining the Imperial Castle, dedicated to the story of the Poznan mathematicians who first broke the German Enigma cipher in 1932 — years before Bletchley Park. The museum covers the mathematical and technical history of the Enigma machine, the methods used to crack it, and the subsequent careers of the three Polish codebreakers, whose contributions were largely suppressed during the Cold War because Poland was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.

The exhibitions are well-designed and work in both Polish and English. There are original and replica Enigma machines to examine, interactive demonstrations of the cipher mechanics, and detailed biographical sections on Rejewski, Różycki, and Zygalski. Even visitors with no particular interest in cryptography tend to find the personal stories compelling — the three men were in their mid-twenties when they achieved the breakthrough, and their subsequent fates during and after the war were not straightforward.

things to do museum
A story
In 1932, three young mathematicians from Poznan University — Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski — became the first people to crack the Enigma cipher. They were chosen partly because they spoke German fluently, and the Polish military intelligence was desperate to read German military communications. Their work, largely unknown in the West until the 1970s, gave Alan Turing and Bletchley Park the conceptual foundation on which the British codebreakers built their wartime success.