The Museum of Romanticism in Opinogóra (Muzeum Romantyzmu w Opinogórze) is housed in the Krasiński family's neo-Gothic palace, set in an English-style park of about 21 ha. The estate is tied to Zygmunt Krasiński, one of the three great bar…
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej, known as MSN) is the newest of the city's major cultural institutions. Since October 2024 it has occupied a striking white building at Marszałkowska 103, right beside the Palac…
In the forest near Kosów Lacki stand some 17,000 stones. Carved into 225 of them are the names of towns from which the Germans deported Jews to the Treblinka II extermination camp. In less than eighteen months, the museum estimates, 800,00…
The Museum of Warsaw (Muzeum Warszawy, pronounced "MOO-zeh-oom var-SHAH-vih") is the Polish capital's main city history museum, housed in eleven connected townhouses on the Old Town Market Square. Instead of a classic timeline, its main ex…
The Polish Army Museum in Warsaw (Muzeum Wojska Polskiego) holds the largest collection of military history in Poland, and since 2023 it has been housed in a new building inside the Warsaw Citadel. Its main exhibition, "1000 Years of Polis…
The Radom Village Museum (Muzeum Wsi Radomskiej) is an open-air museum on the southwestern edge of Radom, a city about 100 km south of Warsaw. Spread across 32 hectares of the rolling Mleczna river valley, it brings together more than 60 h…
In the south-west wing of the Palace of Culture and Science stands the oldest car in Poland, a Cudell from 1899, and next to it an Oldsmobile Curved Dash, the world's first mass-produced automobile. The National Museum of Technology is the…
Warsaw's New Town (Nowe Miasto, pronounced "NO-veh MYAH-stoh") is a former independent town founded in the early 15th century just north of the Old Town, and today it is one of the most pleasant corners of the Polish capital's historic cen…
Krasiński Garden (Ogród Krasińskich, pronounced "kra-SHEEN-skeekh") is a historic city park in Warsaw's Muranów district, created in 1676 as the Baroque garden of the Krasiński Palace and open to the public since the 1760s. Today it is a c…
The 19th-century factory town of Żyrardów (say "zhih-RAR-doof") is a complete industrial settlement built around a linen mill just southwest of Warsaw. Red-brick workers' houses, schools, a hospital, a nursery, a social club, churches and…
The Palace of Culture and Science (Pałac Kultury i Nauki, often shortened to PKiN, "peh-keen") is Warsaw's most famous landmark: a 237-meter Stalinist skyscraper that towers over the city center. Built in the 1950s as a "gift" from the Sov…
The Palace on the Isle in Royal Łazienki (Łazienki: "wah-ZHEN-kee") is Warsaw's most photographed palace and one of the top things to do in the Polish capital. Set on an artificial island in Łazienki Park, it was the summer residence of St…
In 1930 this palace saw the death of Jerzy Hutten-Czapski, father of the painter Józef Czapski and the writer Maria Czapska, and its drawing rooms welcomed the owners' relatives and friends, among them Archbishop Edward von der Ropp and Fa…
The baroque palace of the Bieliński family stands on an artificial island in Lake Rokola, a short drive south-east of Warsaw. King Augustus II the Strong was a guest here, and according to tradition he met Tsar Peter I at the palace in 170…
The palace in Patrykozy stands "literally in the middle of the fields" – that is how members of a Warsaw University of Life Sciences alumni trip described it, calling it the pearl of southern Podlasie. The neo-Gothic residence with an octa…
Below the clock on the corner tower of this white palace is the date AD MDCCCXLIII — 1843, a reminder of how the Radziwiłł family's fortified seat was turned into Prince Sergei Golitsyn's "English castle". Starawieś Palace near Węgrów, sur…
Skaryszewski Park (Park Skaryszewski im. Ignacego Jana Paderewskiego) is Warsaw's largest and one of its most beautiful city parks, laid out in the English landscape style in the Praga-Południe district. It covers 58 ha, with ponds and cha…
For half a century, from 1900 to 1952, the Wilanów narrow-gauge railway ran from Plac Unii Lubelskiej in Warsaw to the Spa Park in Konstancin. A hydrotherapy centre now stands where the station was, but the English-style park laid out arou…
The Sejm and Senate building complex at 4/6/8 Wiejska Street is the seat of the Polish parliament and also one of the most interesting lessons in 20th-century architecture in Warsaw. For more than four centuries the Polish Sejm had no perm…
The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw (Pomnik Bohaterów Getta) is one of Europe's most important Holocaust memorials: a massive stone block more than 10 meters tall, with reliefs by sculptor Nathan Rapoport, honoring the Warsaw Ghett…
A tall concrete obelisk stands on the Vistula embankment at the edge of the Kampinos Forest. Here, on 18 September 1939, in the last days of the Battle of the Bzura, Wehrmacht soldiers shot Polish prisoners of war and civilians from the su…
Praga-Północ (roughly "PRAH-gah POO-wnots", meaning "Praga North") is the Warsaw district on the east bank of the Vistula where the prewar city still stands. Unlike the rebuilt center, much of Praga survived World War II, so you'll find re…
The Płock pier is a 358 m steel walkway that, instead of running straight out into the Vistula, curves along the bank. According to the city, it is the only structure of its kind in Poland. From the deck you look up at the escarpment with…
At the top of the Siedlce town hall tower stands Atlas carrying a golden globe, and for generations locals have simply called him "Jacek". The whole building goes by the same name – a late Baroque and Neoclassical town hall from 1763–1773,…