Landmarks

Lesser Poland UNESCO Trail

Lesser Poland has 14 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List and almost all of them can be combined into a single driving loop of about 320 kilometres starting in Kraków. The UNESCO List was created in 1978, and its very first cohort included two Lesser Polish entries: the historic centre of Kraków and the salt mine in Wieliczka.

From Kraków to the tserkvas

The trail starts on the Main Market Square in Kraków and leads to the mines of Wieliczka and Bochnia (both inscribed in 2013), the pilgrimage complex of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska (1999) and the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp (1979). A separate chapter are the wooden churches of southern Lesser Poland from 2003: the temples in Dębno, Binarowa, Sękowa and Lipnica Murowana. The quartet is complemented by the tserkvas of 2013 in Kwiatoń, Owczary, Powroźnik and Brunary Wyżne.

How to plan it

Each site has its own opening hours and price list — check them on the monuments' websites before you travel. It is most convenient to split the loop into stages: Kraków with Wieliczka is one day, the wooden churches of the Gorce and foothills another, the Lemko tserkvas a third. The starting point on the Market Square also gives access to Wawel (0.8 km) and Kazimierz (1.2 km), while the Wieliczka mine lies 12 km from the centre.