Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemLakes
Międzybrodzie Bialskie
Lake Międzybrodzie fills the gorge of the River Soła through the Little Beskids and looks rather like a mountain fjord: narrow, about 5 km long and squeezed between wooded slopes. It was created in 1937 behind the Porąbka Dam, co-designed…
Hidden gemLakes
Augustów
Linguists trace the lake's name to the Yotvingian word methis, meaning "to throw", and a document from 1396 records it as Meten. Necko is a glacial ribbon lake that makes Augustów both a town and a resort: the town shore has beaches, prome…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Stargard
Locals often call it the cathedral, although it has always been a parish church. The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Queen of the World, in Stargard is one of the most important Gothic churches on the Baltic: it is 77.5 m long, its nave is m…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Złoty Stok
In the 16th century the mines of Złoty Stok supplied, according to the site's operator, as much as 8 per cent of Europe's gold, and in total some 16 tonnes of pure gold were extracted here. Later the ore was used mainly to produce arsenic.…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Brzeg
The nave here rises 30 metres, one of the tallest in Silesia, and St Nicholas' is counted among the largest Gothic churches in the region. It was the burghers' parish church of Brzeg, served Lutherans for four centuries, burned out in 1945…
Hidden gemViewpoints
Ząbkowice Śląskie
The Leaning Tower of Ząbkowice Śląskie stands 34 m tall and leans 2.14 m off the vertical, making it the most tilted tower in Poland. Nicknamed the "Silesian Pisa", it is also open to visitors: 139 steps lead to the top. A visit also revea…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Wałbrzych
Książ Castle stands on a rocky spur above the gorge of the Pełcznica River, and it is this mountain-like landscape within the city limits of Wałbrzych that Książ Landscape Park protects. Its 3,155 hectares hold deep ravines, beech woods, t…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Ozimek
The Ozimek Suspension Bridge (Ozimek is pronounced roughly "oh-ZEE-mek") is the oldest surviving all-iron chain suspension bridge in continental Europe. Opened on September 12, 1827 over the Mała Panew River in southern Poland's Opole regi…
Museums
Sandomierz
The Diocesan Museum in Sandomierz is housed in Długosz House, a late Gothic building from 1476 funded by the chronicler Jan Długosz right next to the cathedral. The star of the collection is "Madonna and Child with St Catherine of Alexandr…
Hidden gemMuseums
Łódź
The Museum of the City of Łódź (until 2009 the Museum of the History of the City of Łódź) occupies the palace of Izrael Poznański, one of Łódź's wealthiest textile magnates. The residence on ul. Ogrodowa, completed in 1903, is itself the s…
Hidden gemMuseums
Sochaczew
Every clock at the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in Sochaczew shows 15:35. That is the time the last passenger train of the Sochaczew County Railway left here on 30 November 1984. That December a museum was established at the old station, an…
Hidden gemMuseums
Wenecja
The Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in Wenecja (say "veh-NETS-yah") is an open-air collection of 600 mm gauge locomotives and rolling stock in the Pałuki lake district of central Poland, described by its operator as one of the largest of its k…
Hidden gemMuseums
Jaworzyna Śląska
If you lined up this museum's entire rolling stock in a single row, it would fill about two kilometres of track. The Railway Museum of Silesia (Muzeum Kolejnictwa na Śląsku) in Jaworzyna Śląska occupies a fan-shaped engine shed from 1907 a…
Hidden gemMuseums
Opole
The Museum of the Opole Countryside (Muzeum Wsi Opolskiej) is an open-air museum in Opole's Bierkowice district, about 5 km from the city center. Around 50 wooden buildings brought from villages across the region – farmhouses, granaries, a…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Jurków
White gypsum cliffs, loess gullies, karst ponds and slopes covered in feather grass: in places, the Ponidzie region looks like a piece of steppe dropped into southern Poland. The Nida Landscape Park (Nadnidziański Park Krajobrazowy) protec…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Duszniki-Zdrój
Emperor Joseph II, future US president John Quincy Adams and the young Fryderyk Chopin all once stood on the summit of Orlica. This border peak (1,084 m) is the highest point of the Polish part of the Orlické Mountains (Góry Orlickie) and…
Hidden gemPalaces
Kraków
Krzysztofory Palace, on the corner of the Main Market Square and ul. Szczepańska, is the headquarters of the Museum of Kraków and one of the best places to get to grips with the city's history in a single afternoon. It takes its name from…
Hidden gemPalaces
Wisła
In the night before Christmas Eve 1927, the Habsburgs' freshly renovated hunting lodge in Wisła, intended as a residence for the President of Poland, burned down in unexplained circumstances. In its place Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz designed a mo…
Hidden gemPalaces
Warszawa
For nearly a hundred years this was the point from which distances from Warsaw were measured, and on 2 November 1830 Fryderyk Chopin handed in his luggage at the post office here, not knowing he was leaving Poland for good. Wessel Palace (…
Hidden gemFortifications
Poznań
Citadel Park (Park Cytadela, "tsi-tah-DEH-lah") in Poznań is the city's largest park — about 100 hectares of green hilltop just north of the center, built on the ruins of Fort Winiary, a huge 19th-century Prussian fortress. It's where loca…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Warszawa
A monumental 19th-century church, the surviving townhouses of Próżna Street and the 160-metre Cosmopolitan tower all stand around a single square. Grzybowski Square (Plac Grzybowski) is one of the few places in Warsaw where you can clearly…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Muszyna
Poprad Landscape Park (POH-prahd) is one of the largest protected landscape areas in Poland, covering most of the Beskid Sądecki mountains near the Slovak border. It takes in the forested Radziejowa and Jaworzyna Krynicka ranges, the gorge…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Istebna
At Kubalonka Pass (761 m) the road from Wisła to Istebna crosses the Main Beskid Trail, and right next to it stands a wooden church that came to the mountains from the lowlands near Gliwice. The pass separates the Stożek–Czantoria range fr…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Roztoka Ryterska
Radziejowa (rah-jeh-YOH-vah) is the highest peak of the Beskid Sądecki range in southern Poland, at 1,266 m (many maps say 1,262 m), and one of the summits of the Crown of Polish Mountains, a popular peak-bagging list. The forested dome ri…