Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Częstochowa
For centuries Częstochowa was two towns, Old and New Częstochowa, and each had its own town hall. The Neoclassical building on Plac Biegańskiego was built for the merged town, halfway between the two former market squares. Today it houses…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Głogówek
From the tower of this town hall a watchman once announced the hours and important news with a trumpet, and in 1625 soldiers passing through the town shot the ball on its tip through in three places. The Renaissance town hall in Głogówek,…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Strzelno
A round nave of granite blocks, a square chancel and a horseshoe-shaped tower: St Procopius Rotunda in Strzelno is the largest Romanesque church in Poland built on a circular plan. It survived being turned into a convent gatehouse, desecra…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Ludźmierz
During the coronation in 1963, the sceptre slipped from the hand of the statue of the Virgin Mary and was caught by a young bishop, Karol Wojtyła. Years later many saw this as a sign of his election as pope. Ludźmierz, the oldest parish in…
Hidden gemMuseums
Chorzów
In the middle of Poland's most industrialised region, a few minutes from the Silesian Stadium, stand log cottages from Istebna, octagonal barns from Kobiór, windmills and a wooden church from 1791. The Upper Silesian Ethnographic Park in C…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Wisła
Soszów Wielki (885 m, Velký Sošov in Czech) is a border peak in the Stożek–Czantoria ridge where you can stand with one foot in Poland and the other in the Czech Republic. The Main Beskid Trail runs over the summit, and the clearing at the…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Wałbrzych
The last cart of coal came up from the Julia mine on 20 September 1996, and less than two decades later the site reopened as one of Poland's largest industrial heritage centres. At the Old Mine (Stara Kopalnia) in Wałbrzych you are often g…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
gmina Lubsza
Almost 80 per cent of the park is forest, mostly pine growing on sandy dunes, while the Oder valley holds riverside woods, oak-hornbeam forest and oxbow lakes covered with water chestnut. Stobrawa Landscape Park is one of the largest lands…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Szczebrzeszyn
By a spring on the edge of Szczebrzeszyn stands the world's first monument to a beetle, unveiled in 2002 as a nod to Jan Brzechwa's famous Polish tongue-twister about a beetle buzzing in the reeds of Szczebrzeszyn. Around the town stretche…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Tarnowskie Góry
The Black Trout Adit in Tarnowskie Góry (Sztolnia Czarnego Pstrąga, roughly SHTOL-nya CHAR-neh-go PSTRON-ga) is a 600-meter stretch of a 19th-century drainage tunnel that visitors explore by boat, deep underground. It formed part of the sy…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Grzmiąca
Waligóra (German: Heidelberg, 936 m) is the highest peak of the Stone Mountains (Góry Kamienne) and of their Dry Mountains (Góry Suche) section, and one of the summits on the Crown of Polish Mountains list. It rises so steeply above the Th…
Hidden gemLandmarks
Gdańsk
Ołowianka Island (pronounced roughly "oh-woh-VYAN-kah") is a small island on the Motława River in the center of Gdańsk, directly across from the medieval Crane and the Long Embankment. In a compact area it packs the rebuilt granaries of th…
Hidden gemCastles
Olsztyn
Warmian Chapter Castle in Olsztyn (pronounced roughly "OL-shtin") is a 14th-century Gothic brick fortress and the top sight in the capital of Poland's Warmia and Masuria lake region. Nicolaus Copernicus ran the surrounding estates from her…
Hidden gemCastles
gmina Pilica
The tower of Smoleń Castle rises so clearly above the beech canopy that it has served as a landmark in this part of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland for centuries. This is Pilcza, the family seat of the Pilecki clan, which produced Elżbieta G…
Hidden gemCastles
Ryn
Ryn Castle (say "rin") is a medieval Teutonic Knights' fortress on a hill between two lakes in the small town of Ryn, right in the middle of Poland's Great Masurian Lakes. After centuries as a seat of local officials and later a Prussian p…
Hidden gemCastles
Wytrzyszczka
You can reach this steep headland above the Dunajec River, surrounded by water on three sides, by ferry across Lake Czchów. Tropsztyn Castle in Wytrzyszczka is almost entirely new: it has been rebuilt since the 1990s on the ruins of a stro…
Hidden gemCastles
Chałupki
Chałupki Castle once guarded a ford on the Oder, and after the Silesian Wars of 1742 a new border separated it from the town it took its name from: the palace stayed in Prussia, while Bohumín remained with the Habsburgs. It still stands ju…
Hidden gemCastles
Czchów
The round tower on the hill above the Dunajec has become the symbol of Czchów, although for centuries it was above all a customs post. The royal castle guarded the trade route to Hungary and collected duties on goods shipped along the rive…
Hidden gemCastles
Dobczyce
The dam of Lake Dobczyce literally leans against the castle hill, so from the walls of this royal fortress you look at medieval stonework and at the waters of a reservoir created by damming the Raba river at the same time. This is where th…
Hidden gemCastles
Nidzica
Nidzica Castle was completed in the spring of 1409, and just a year later, on 12 July 1410, the Polish army took it without a fight on its way to the Battle of Grunwald. This mighty brick fortress of the Teutonic Knights, on a hill above t…
Hidden gemCastles
Ostróda
For six weeks in 1807 this Teutonic Knights' castle was Napoleon's headquarters. From here he ran his empire and signed the decree creating the first battalions of a horse-drawn military train in history. Before that, the fortress on Lake…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Sucha Beskidzka
Sucha Beskidzka Castle is nicknamed "Little Wawel" because its arcaded courtyard resembles the royal castle in Kraków. Over four centuries this Renaissance residence at the foot of Mount Jasień passed through several noble families, and in…
Hidden gemCastles
Łupki
On Castle Hill (383 m) above the River Bóbr stand the ruins of a castle that its custodians describe as the oldest stone castle in Silesia. The first masonry building went up here after 1160 on the initiative of Duke Bolesław the Tall, and…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Duszniki-Zdrój
It was meant to run the length of the Sudetes, from Zittau to near Opava – about 300 km of mountain road. Only two sections were ever built, and the longer one is the Sudeten Highway (Autostrada Sudecka), today regional road 389 from Polsk…