The Spa Park, also called the Main Park, is the largest of Ciechocinek's four parks, covering about 19 ha. You stroll here among old trees and wooden buildings in the “Swiss style” that has been the spa's trademark since the 19th century.…
The Toruń Planetarium (officially the Center for Space Popularization "Planetarium – Toruń") is one of the most visited things to do in Toruń, the city where Nicolaus Copernicus was born. It drew more than 290,000 visitors in 2022. Shows r…
Since 1853 a bronze Copernicus has stood in the south-eastern corner of Toruń's Old Town Market Square, one finger raised to the sky. The city calls it the most popular meeting point in Toruń and the most photographed sight in town. It pay…
The Old Town Hall in Toruń (pronounced roughly "TOR-oon") is the Gothic heart of one of Poland's best-preserved medieval cities, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. For centuries this single brick building housed the city council, the…
The white town hall in the middle of a vast market square is Chełmno's calling card and one of the finest Renaissance buildings in northern Poland. On its west wall hangs an iron rod 432.5 centimetres long – the standard measure of length…
Opposite the Old Town, across the Vistula, stand the brick walls of a royal stronghold that King Władysław Jagiełło built right under the nose of Toruń, then held by the Teutonic Knights. At Dybów Castle in 1454, King Casimir IV Jagiellon…
The ruins of the Teutonic Castle in Toruń are the remains of one of the oldest strongholds of the Teutonic Order in the Chełmno Land, set between the Old and New Towns right by the Vistula River. No foreign army ever captured the castle: i…
The New Town Market Square (Rynek Nowomiejski) is the heart of what was once a second, completely separate Toruń. It was laid out when the New Town received its charter in 1264, and although it lies just a few minutes from the Old Town Mar…
The Old Town Market Square in Toruń (pronounced roughly "TOR-oon") is the heart of one of Europe's best-preserved medieval towns and the natural first stop on any visit. In the middle stands the brick Gothic Old Town Hall with a 40-meter v…
The sanctuary in Skępe is a late-Gothic Bernardine church and friary with four wings of Baroque cloisters, born of a vision during a plague in 1495. The small statue venerated here, Our Lady Expecting, shows Mary awaiting a child, which is…
The Granaries on the Brda River (Spichrze nad Brdą) are the classic postcard view of Bydgoszcz (say "BID-gosh-ch"): three half-timbered grain warehouses with steep red roofs, standing right at the water's edge on Grodzka Street. They recal…
Toruń Old Town (say "TOR-oon-y") is one of the best-preserved medieval town centers in Europe and the main reason travelers stop in this city on the Vistula River. Red-brick Gothic churches, merchants' houses, riverside walls, the great Ol…
Old Fordon (Stary Fordon) is a former small town on the Vistula, part of Bydgoszcz since 1973 – with an intimate market square, churches, a historic synagogue and a view of the Fordon truss bridge. It looks nothing like big-city Bydgoszcz:…
The Old Market Square (Stary Rynek, "STAH-rih RIN-ek") in Bydgoszcz, Poland, is the heart of the medieval town founded in 1346 – a rectangular square of about 100 × 125 m (330 × 410 ft) framed by colorful townhouses, the town hall in a for…
The Piast Trail is a tourist route through Greater Poland and Kuyavia that retraces the journeys of Poland's first rulers and their courts between the strongholds that served as their capitals. It runs from Poznań via Ostrów Lednicki and G…
Poland's Romanesque Route is more a signposted network of monuments than a single trail: churches, rotundas, abbeys and the remains of palaces from the time of the first Piast rulers, between the 11th and 13th centuries. The best place to…
The graduation towers of Ciechocinek (say "che-ho-CHEE-nek") are three giant 19th-century timber structures in central Poland, together the largest of their kind in Europe. Brine trickles down walls of packed blackthorn twigs, evaporates i…
The Wenecja Castle ruins (say "veh-NETS-yah"), known locally as the castle of the Venetian Devil, are the remains of a 14th-century Gothic stronghold on a strip of land between two lakes in Poland's Pałuki region. A grim legend about a mer…
Townhouses, rear wings and former small factories rising straight out of the Młynówka river opposite Mill Island – this is Bydgoszcz Venice, one of the best-known views of Bydgoszcz. This group of old-town buildings forms the southern and…
The Bydgoszcz Water Tower (Wieża ciśnień, roughly "VYEH-zha CHEESH-nyen") is a red-brick neo-Gothic tower from 1900 standing on the escarpment above the Old Town. Today it houses the Water Supply Museum and, at the top, a viewing gallery w…
Mill Island (Wyspa Młyńska, roughly "VIS-pah MWIN-skah") is a leafy river island in the heart of Bydgoszcz, Poland, wedged between the Brda River and a narrow side channel called the Młynówka. On just 6.5 hectares (16 acres) you'll find 19…
The castle in Radzyń Chełmiński is regarded as a model seat of a Teutonic Order commandery – a four-winged convent house almost 49 × 49 m in plan, with turrets at the corners and a massive octagonal main tower that may have stood around 48…
Where the Wda flows into the Vistula stands a Teutonic castle with a tower that has been slowly leaning for centuries. About 35 metres tall and 106 cm off vertical, it is considered the tallest leaning tower in Poland open to visitors. Aft…