Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
National parks
ustrzyki-gorne
Bieszczady National Park (Bieszczadzki Park Narodowy; say "byesh-CHAH-dee") in Poland's far southeastern corner is the country's largest mountain national park and its wildest. Here the Carpathians form rolling grassy ridges called połonin…
National parks
Krempna
Magura National Park (Magurski Park Narodowy; "mah-GOOR-skee") protects a quiet corner of the Low Beskids (Beskid Niski) in southeastern Poland: gentle forested ridges, streams with small waterfalls, valleys where Lemko villages once stood…
Lakes
Solina
Whole villages lie beneath the surface of Lake Solina — the historic village of Solina, Teleśnica Sanna, Horodek, Sokole, Chrewt and much of Wołkowyja disappeared under water when the reservoir began to fill in 1968. Today it is Poland's l…
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…
Mountains & peaks
Wołosate
Tarnica (1,346 m) is the highest peak of the Polish Bieszczady Mountains and of the whole Podkarpackie region — and the best viewpoint in this corner of the Carpathians. When the air is exceptionally clear, you can see not only the Tatras…
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 gemTechnical monuments
Cisna
In 1994 this little railway hauled its last load of timber, and it looked destined for the scrapyard. Today it carries more than 160,000 passengers a year and ranks among the most popular narrow-gauge lines in Poland. The Bieszczady Forest…
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 gemCastles
Przemyśl
Przemyśl Castle (say "PSHEH-mishl"), also called Casimir Castle after King Casimir the Great, crowns Castle Hill above the old town of Przemyśl, a historic border town in southeastern Poland. This is where the story of one of Poland's olde…
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…
Other
Smerek
Smerek is the westernmost summit of the Połonina Wetlińska ridge and one of the most recognisable peaks in the Bieszczady Mountains: a grassy dome 1,222 m high (some maps give 1,223 m) rising above the villages of Smerek and Wetlina. Its o…
Gardens
Bolestraszyce
The Bolestraszyce Arboretum (say "boh-leh-strah-SHIH-tseh") is a botanical garden about 4 miles (7 km) northeast of Przemyśl in southeastern Poland, close to the Ukrainian border. Founded in 1975 on the grounds of an old manor where the pa…
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…
Museums
Bóbrka
The Ignacy Łukasiewicz Museum of the Oil and Gas Industry in Bóbrka (pronounced roughly "BOOB-rka") sits on the grounds of an oil field founded in 1854 – the oldest oil mine in the world that is still in operation. In a forest near Krosno…
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…