Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Kraków
MOCAK, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (say "MO-tsak"), is the city's leading venue for art of recent decades. It stands in Zabłocie, a former industrial area across the Vistula, on the grounds of Oskar Schindler's wartime enamel…
Mountains & peaks
Wola Kosnowa
For years Modyń (1,029 m) was a summit with little to see: dense forest blocked the panorama, and the old wooden triangulation tower, locally called a patryja, rotted away and was blown down in the 1980s. That changed in 2021, when a woode…
Nature
Jastrzębik
The Henryk Świdziński Mofette, on the border of Jastrzębik and Złockie near Muszyna, is the largest and most productive mofette in Poland. Gas that is 95% carbon dioxide bubbles up constantly from the bed of the Złocki stream. An area of a…
Mountains & peaks
Chyszówki
Mogielica (roughly "mo-gee-EH-lee-tsa"), at 1,170 m, is the highest peak of the Beskid Wyspowy, the "Island Beskids" of southern Poland, so named because its mountains rise like separate islands from the valleys. It lies in Limanowa County…
Fortifications
Dobczyce
On the Old Town hill in Dobczyce, right next to the ruins of the royal castle, stretches of medieval sandstone town walls survive. Some sections stand to their full height, others have been reconstructed, and a rebuilt tower now serves as…
Museums
Olkusz
In the centre of Olkusz, in an outbuilding of the former hospital at 32 Szpitalna Street, sits a remarkable collection of art and everyday objects from West and Central Africa. The African Museum was founded in 1971 on a gift from a local…
Museums
Rudno
Right below the ruins of Tenczyn Castle, on the volcanic hill of Spalisko (about 400 m above sea level), collector Witold Koprucha opened the private Agate Museum in 2020. The key specimens all come from the immediate area: fields and debr…
Museums
Kraków
The Archdiocesan Museum in Kraków, named after Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, occupies two historic townhouses on Kanonicza Street, right below Wawel Castle. It combines a fine collection of sacred art from churches across the Archdiocese of Krak…
Museums
Kraków
Under the glass roof of a former Kraków Fortress building hangs the fuselage of a British Halifax bomber, with a V-2 rocket standing nearby. The General Emil Fieldorf "Nil" Home Army Museum tells the story of the Polish Underground State a…
Technical monuments
Szczucin
The Road Museum in Szczucin (roughly "SHCHOO-cheen") is one of the most unusual free things to do in southern Poland: an open-air collection of steam rollers, snowplows and road-building machines, plus a walking trail that takes you throug…
Museums
Tarnów
Your guide to Tarnów's history here is an organ grinder, and the route through the rooms follows a perforated barrel-organ strip packed with curiosities. The Museum of the History of Tarnów and the Region, a branch of the Tarnów Regional M…
Museums
Kraków
The Czartoryski Museum in Kraków (say "char-to-RIS-kee") is the branch of the National Museum in Kraków that holds Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine – one of only a handful of Leonardo portraits in the world. Set in a cluster of hist…
Museums
Kraków
The Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków (Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego) is one of Europe's largest aviation museums and a must for anyone who loves aircraft. It occupies the historic Rakowice-Czyżyny airfield (roughly "ra-ko-VEE-tseh chi-ZHI-ni"…
Museums
Kraków
At 17 Kanonicza Street, on the way from the Main Square to Wawel, a red facade hides one of the finest collections of medieval art in Poland. In the Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace, the National Museum in Kraków displays the Krużlowa Madonna, w…
Museums
Kraków
The National Museum in Kraków – Main Building (Polish: Gmach Główny, roughly "gmakh GWOV-ny") is the largest exhibition venue of Poland's oldest national museum, standing on 3 Maja Avenue just west of Kraków's Old Town, opposite the vast B…
Museums
Krynica-Zdrój
The Nikifor Museum in Krynica-Zdrój (KRIH-nee-tsah ZDROOY) is a small but remarkable museum dedicated to Nikifor Krynicki, a self-taught painter from the Lemko minority who became one of Europe's best-known naive artists. It occupies the p…
Museums
Ojców
The Nature Exhibition of Ojców National Park occupies the former Hotel pod Łokietkiem, built in 1860 when Ojców was a fashionable spa. The visit begins with 3D films and ends in front of a huge diorama in which dusk falls and night arrives…
Museums
Olkusz
The Stefan Ząbczyński Olkusz Land Firefighting Museum is a small institution on ul. Floriańska in Olkusz, a few steps from the market square. Open since 1978, it displays 19th- and 20th-century firefighting equipment: horse-drawn pumps, en…
Museums
Ciężkowice
About 200 bird species, hundreds of butterflies, a brown bear and a glass floor over a recreated meadow with amphibians and reptiles – all in a small museum in Ciężkowice. Its collection is the life's work of one family: Dr Włodzimierz Tom…
Museums
Olkusz
In front of a house on Olkusz's market square stands a statue of a miner holding a sword. Inside the museum behind him is a real sword, known as the executioner's sword. Legend says two miners were beheaded with it for searching for silver…
Museums
Stary Sącz
The Regional Museum in Stary Sącz (say "STAH-ri sonch"), named after ethnographer Seweryn Udziela, fills a historic low-roofed house on the market square of this small town in southern Poland, about 100 km (60 miles) southeast of Kraków. I…
Museums
Kraków
Opposite Wawel, on the other side of the Vistula, stands a building with an undulating roof designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. The Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology exists thanks to the film director Andrzej Wajd…
Museums
Zakopane
The Tatra Museum (Muzeum Tatrzańskie) in Zakopane is the best place to understand Poland's favorite mountain town before you head into the hills. Its main building on Krupówki (kroo-POOF-kee), the town's busy pedestrian street, tells the s…
Museums
Lanckorona
In 1869 a fire destroyed 79 houses around Lanckorona's market square. The wooden house that has been home to the Professor Antoni Krajewski Museum since 1967 is the only building on the square that survived it. The house itself is the most…