Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemNature
Łęknica
The Muskau Arch is a horseshoe about 40 km long, pressed into the ground by an ice sheet on both sides of the Lusatian Neisse — it is sometimes described as the only terminal moraine on Earth visible from space. For decades lignite, clay a…
Hidden gemCaves
Trzebieszowice
In a side niche of Radochów Cave, researchers in the 1930s found a cave bear skull covered with a stone slab — and for years people wondered whether a Palaeolithic human had placed it there. This small karst cave in the Golden Mountains, a…
Hidden gemLakes
Chełmża
The lake gave the town its name: in 1251 the settlement on its shore was called Culmsee in German, meaning "Chełmno Lake". Lake Chełmża, the largest in Toruń County, reaches as a narrow channel right into the centre of Chełmża, with a Goth…
Hidden gemLakes
Goczałkowice-Zdrój
Beneath the surface of Goczałkowice Reservoir lies the centre of the former village of Zarzecze, church and all, along with the historic border between Upper Silesia and Cieszyn Silesia. Filled in 1956, this reservoir on the Vistula covers…
Hidden gemLakes
Serwy
More than 40 metres deep, with clear water and a quiet zone where motorboats are banned, Lake Serwy lies on the edge of the Augustów Forest, about 20 km from Augustów. For years it has drawn people looking for swimming, canoeing and woodla…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Bystra
In the early 19th century nobody called this peak Klimczok: it was known as Goryczna Skałka, and its present name came from a Romantic-era tale of an outlaw who supposedly hid in a cave below the summit. Klimczok (1,117 m) is one of the mo…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Tum
The Collegiate Church in Tum (say "toom") – the Archcollegiate Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Alexius near Łęczyca – is one of Poland's finest Romanesque buildings. With two apses, four towers and thick stone walls, it rises from the fi…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Chełmża
King John III Sobieski brought back the saddle cloth of Kara Mustafa's horse from the Battle of Vienna and gave it to this church, where, turned into a liturgical cope, it survives to this day. The Co-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Chełm…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Krutyń
The Masurian Landscape Park (Mazurski Park Krajobrazowy) protects more than 560 km² (215 square miles) of forest, glacial lakes and old villages in the heart of Poland's Masurian Lake District, between the resort towns of Mikołajki, Mrągow…
Hidden gemMuseums
Kołobrzeg
The Museum of Polish Arms in Kołobrzeg (pronounced roughly “koh-WOB-zhek”) is one of Poland's leading military history museums and one of the top things to do in this Baltic spa town. Its main branch in the town center combines a chronolog…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Władysławowo
The Coastal Landscape Park (Nadmorski Park Krajobrazowy) protects the most varied stretch of Poland's Baltic coast, north of Gdańsk: the whole Hel Peninsula, the cliffs at Rozewie and Jastrzębia Góra, coastal peat bogs and the shallow Puck…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Zakopane
Nosal (1,206 m) is the quickest way from Zakopane to a proper Tatra view: a green trail climbs from Kuźnice to the summit in about 35 minutes. This modest crag closes the north-eastern ridge of Kasprowy Wierch and takes its name from rocks…
Hidden gemGardens
Łódź
It all began in 1946 with a 1.3-hectare plot of medicinal plants in the city's tree nursery. Today the Jakub Mowszowicz Botanical Garden in Łódź covers 67 hectares, making it one of the largest botanical gardens in Poland, with a Japanese…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Henryków
"Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai" — "let me grind now, and you take a rest" — is what, according to the chronicle, the settler Boguchwał said to his wife as she worked the hand quern. Entered around 1270 in the Latin Book of Henryków, thi…
Hidden gemPalaces
Łomnica
A square, three-storey palace with two corner turrets stands where the roads to Karpniki and Wojanów split, about 5 km from Jelenia Góra. In the early 1990s it was a ruin; today it is one of the liveliest estates in the Valley of Palaces a…
Hidden gemPalaces
gmina Barciany
365 windows for the days of the year, 52 rooms for the weeks, 12 chimneys for the months, 7 balconies for the days of the week and 4 portico columns for the seasons — this is how tradition explains the architecture of Drogosze Palace, and…
Hidden gemPalaces
Warszawa
Wilanów Palace (Polish: Pałac w Wilanowie, roughly "vee-LAH-noof") is the Baroque summer residence of King John III Sobieski in southern Warsaw, often called the "Polish Versailles." Unlike much of the capital, which was rebuilt after Worl…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Łódź
This octagonal square at the northern end of Piotrkowska Street is the point from which Łódź numbers its buildings, and the place where the industrial city began. It was laid out in 1823 as the marketplace of a new cloth-makers' settlement…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Karpacz
Śnieżka (pronounced roughly "SHNYEZH-kah"; Czech: Sněžka, German: Schneekoppe) is the highest mountain in the Giant Mountains and the whole Sudetes range, rising above the resort town of Karpacz on the Polish–Czech border. Its rocky cone,…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Hajnówka
A roof of irregular, interlocking concrete shells makes it look more like a sculpture than a traditional Orthodox church. The Holy Trinity Cathedral in Hajnówka holds about 5,000 worshippers, one of the largest Orthodox churches in Poland,…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Kraków
Long before chartered Kraków and its Main Square existed, a trade route from Hungary and Bohemia to Mazovia and Greater Poland already ran this way. Grodzka Street leads from a corner of the Main Market Square to the foot of Wawel Hill and…
Hidden gemWaterfalls
Szklarska Poręba
Kamieńczyk Waterfall (ka-MYEN-chik) in Szklarska Poręba is the highest waterfall in the Polish Sudetes. The Kamieńczyk stream drops 27 m in three cascades into a narrow granite gorge. Visitors walk down on steel platforms, wearing a helmet…
Hidden gemWaterfalls
Piechowice
Szklarka Waterfall (SHKLAR-ka) is the second-highest waterfall in the Polish Karkonosze, or Giant Mountains, and one of the easiest to reach. A short, flat path through beech woods leads from a parking lot on national road 3 to a viewing p…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Stara Wieś
Here the River Warta swings in a great loop through the limestone hills of the Wieluń Upland, and along its banks springs pulse, pushing water out alternately from a rock crevice and from the bed of an oxbow lake. Załęcze Landscape Park, c…