Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Castles
Krasiczyn
Krasiczyn Castle (say "krah-SHEE-chin") is one of the finest Renaissance residences in Poland, set in the San River valley about 6 miles (10 km) west of Przemyśl, in the country's far southeast. Its square layout, four very different corne…
Castles
Łańcut
Łańcut Castle (say "WAHN-tsoot") is one of the grandest aristocratic residences in Poland and the jewel of the Podkarpackie region in the country's southeast. For more than three centuries it belonged to two of Poland's most powerful famil…
Churches & monasteries
Przemyśl
Przemyśl's archcathedral looks like a Baroque church, but beneath its floor lie the walls of a much older one. In the crypts, opened to visitors in 2014, you can see the foundations of the Romanesque rotunda of St Nicholas from the 12th ce…
Castles
Baranów Sandomierski
In the late 19th century Sławomir Odrzywolski, the first to survey the castle in detail, wrote that it could "boldly stand beside Wawel Castle". That remark gave it the nickname "Little Wawel". The Leszczyński family residence was built in…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Smolnik
On an empty hill above the San valley, away from today's houses, stands a lone wooden church with three tent roofs. St Michael the Archangel's Church in Smolnik, dating from 1791, is the only surviving Boyko-style church in the Polish Bies…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Turzańsk
Five onion domes above a single long roof and a wooden bell tower on the same axis, said to be the tallest in the Polish Carpathians — this is the tserkva (Eastern-rite wooden church) of St Michael the Archangel in Turzańsk. Built in 1801–…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Przemyśl
In one of the frescoes in the nave, the army of the Prince of Transylvania besieges Przemyśl, and the town is saved through the intercession of St Vincent, whose relics the Franciscans here have kept since the 16th century. The Church of S…
Churches & monasteries
Przeworsk
The Basilica of the Holy Spirit in Przeworsk (say "PSHEH-vorsk") is a 15th-century Gothic church in southeastern Poland that was run for over four centuries by the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, an order founded in Jerusalem. Its tr…
Museums
Rzeszów
The Bedtime Cartoon Museum in Rzeszów (Muzeum Dobranocek) is devoted to "dobranocki" – the evening cartoons that Polish children waited for before bed for decades. Its display cases on Mickiewicza Street hold original film puppets of Teddy…
Churches & monasteries
Stara Wieś
Right next to Brzozów stands a late-baroque basilica with twin towers that looks as if it had been moved from a big city. Built by the Pauline Fathers and run by the Jesuits since the 19th century, it is one of the most important Marian sh…
Churches & monasteries
Leżajsk
The Basilica of the Annunciation in Leżajsk (say "LEH-zhysk") is the church of a fortified Bernardine (Franciscan) monastery in southeastern Poland and one of the region's most important Marian shrines. Built in the early 17th century on t…
Churches & monasteries
Chotyniec
The Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Chotyniec (say "ho-TIN-yets") is a Greek Catholic wooden tserkva – an Eastern-rite church – built in 1615 near the A4 motorway and the Ukrainian border, between Radymno and Przemyśl in sou…
Churches & monasteries
Radruż
St. Paraskeva's Church in Radruż (say "RAH-droosh") is one of the oldest and best-preserved wooden tserkvas – Eastern-rite churches – in Poland: a late-Gothic timber church from the end of the 16th century on an oval hill in the Eastern Ro…
Churches & monasteries
Bystre
Three metal-clad domes with false lanterns rise above a Bieszczady meadow, well away from the main roads. The church of St Michael the Archangel in Bystre, in the Czarna district of the Bieszczady Mountains, was built in 1901–1902 and fell…
Churches & monasteries
Sanok
In Dobra (formerly Dobra Szlachecka) on the San River, in the Sanok municipality, a walled complex of two sacred buildings survives: a wooden tserkva from 1879 and an older gate tserkva in a tower. Poland's National Heritage Board describe…
Churches & monasteries
Komańcza
On the evening of 13 September 2006 one of the most remarkable wooden churches of the Carpathians burnt down in Komańcza, together with its iconostasis of 1832. Only the bell tower survived. The next day the Orthodox Archbishop of Przemyśl…
Churches & monasteries
Komańcza
In the valley of the Rzepedka stream, a tributary of the Osława, stands the wooden Greek Catholic Church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker from 1824 – a typical Eastern Lemko church with three onion domes and a free-standing bell tower. It s…
Churches & monasteries
Komańcza
The wooden Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God in Szczawne stands on a small rise above the Osława valley, by the road to Komańcza. Built in 1888–1889 as a Greek Catholic church, it now serves the Orthodox faithful. It h…
Churches & monasteries
Turzańsk
These wooden churches, known in Polish as cerkwie, are what remains of the Lemko and Boyko villages that filled the Osława and San valleys before the Second World War. The Lemkos and Boykos are Ruthenian highland communities of the Carpath…
Mountains & peaks
Smerek
Chatka Puchatka ("KHAHT-kah poo-KHAHT-kah", Polish for Pooh's Hut, named after The House at Pooh Corner) is the highest tourist building in the Bieszczady Mountains of southeastern Poland. Perched at about 1,228 m on the open grassland rid…
Churches & monasteries
Zarzecze
In Zarzecze, a former village on the high right bank of the San and now part of Nisko, stands a larch-wood Church of Our Lady of the Snows dated to 1722. It was not built here, though: in 1923 it was moved from Jeżowe, bought by two Zarzec…
Churches & monasteries
Krzeszów
On Rotunda hill above the San river stands a wooden church that survived the front line of the First World War, only to come close to losing a battle with its own foundations. The three-aisled Baroque church begun in 1727 is a rarity – woo…
Churches & monasteries
Haczów
The wooden church in Haczów (say "HAH-choof"), dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. Michael the Archangel, is the largest Gothic wooden church in Europe and one of the oldest log-built churches in Poland. It stands in the…
Museums
Sanok
The Zdzisław Beksiński Gallery in Sanok ("ZJEE-swaf bek-SHEEN-skee", "SAH-nok") holds the world's largest collection of work by the Polish painter famous for his haunting, dreamlike landscapes of ruins, skeletal figures and burning skies.…