Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Landmarks
Węgrów
The wavy, two-storey gable crowned with a star can be seen from the far end of St Mary's Market Square. The Gdańsk House, a Baroque inn from the mid-18th century, recalls the days when Węgrów lived off the grain trade and competed with nei…
Museums
Jelenia Góra
The Gerhart Hauptmann House in Jagniątków (say "yag-NYON-tkoof") is a museum in Villa Wiesenstein, the home of the German playwright and 1912 Nobel Prize winner from 1901 until his death in 1946. Jagniątków, formerly Agnetendorf, is now a…
Museums
Kazimierz Dolny
The Kuncewicz House in Kazimierz Dolny (say "kah-ZHEE-myesh DOL-ni") is the 1930s timber-and-stone villa where Polish novelist Maria Kuncewiczowa lived and wrote, now a literary museum with its original interiors intact. Known locally as t…
Landmarks
Olsztyn
The small building on ul. Zyndrama z Maszkowic is the first completed work of Erich Mendelsohn – the Olsztyn-born architect later famous for the Einstein Tower in Potsdam. The former Jewish pre-burial house Bet Tahara (Hebrew for House of…
Museums
Toruń
The Nicolaus Copernicus House in Toruń (say "TOR-oon-y") is a museum set inside two late-Gothic merchant houses on Kopernika Street, a short walk from the Old Town Market Square. Local tradition links the address with the birth of the astr…
Landmarks
Pyzdry
On the market square in Pyzdry, among brick town houses, stands a wooden house with an arcaded porch resting on four posts. It was built in 1768 and is the oldest surviving residential building in this former royal town on the Warta. Today…
Museums
Gdańsk
Uphagen House in Gdańsk is a small museum of burgher interiors at 12 Long Street (ulica Długa), and the only place on the Royal Route where you can walk through a furnished 18th-century merchant's home. Instead of display cases you get a s…
Museums
Żelazowa Wola
Frédéric Chopin's Birthplace in Żelazowa Wola (say "zheh-lah-ZO-vah VO-lah") is the modest whitewashed manor annex where the composer was born in 1810, set in a romantic landscaped park about 50 km (30 miles) west of Warsaw. Run as a branc…
Churches & monasteries
Głogówek
The Loreto House in Głogówek is a copy of the Holy House (Santa Casa) of Loreto, completed in 1630 at the expense of Count Georg III von Oppersdorff and enclosed within the Franciscan church at 3 Klasztorna Street. It is a "church within a…
Churches & monasteries
Gołąb
In the village of Gołąb on the Vistula, between Puławy and Dęblin, stands an exact copy of one of Europe's most famous shrines: the Holy House of Loreto, where according to tradition the Holy Family lived. Built in 1634–1638, the Loreto Ho…
Amusement parks
Skoczów
The Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower within a few hundred steps of each other, next to realistic dinosaur models and a house built upside down. Dream Park in Ochaby is a family amusement park on natio…
Churches & monasteries
Narew
Every year on 2 August, the feast of the Prophet Elijah, Orthodox priests walk around the whole village with the residents, blessing farmyards and houses with holy water – a procession that was banned under communism. At the heart of this…
Churches & monasteries
Milówka
From outside it is a modest shingled church on a high hill in Pochodzita, a hamlet of Laliki. The interior is the surprise: walls and ceiling are covered with scenes scratched into the wood with a nail and knife or burnt into it, the work…
Churches & monasteries
Babice
This dark larch-wood church once stood more than 60 kilometres away, in Niegowić near Bochnia. It was here, in 1948–1949, that a newly ordained curate, Father Karol Wojtyła – the future Pope John Paul II – served his first post. In 1973 th…
Churches & monasteries
Zarzecze
In Zarzecze, a former village on the high right bank of the San and now part of Nisko, stands a larch-wood Church of Our Lady of the Snows dated to 1722. It was not built here, though: in 1923 it was moved from Jeżowe, bought by two Zarzec…
Churches & monasteries
Krzeszów
On Rotunda hill above the San river stands a wooden church that survived the front line of the First World War, only to come close to losing a battle with its own foundations. The three-aisled Baroque church begun in 1727 is a rarity – woo…
Churches & monasteries
Lubliniec
The small wooden Church of St Anne has stood in Lubliniec since 1653, although it has occupied its present spot only since the early 21st century. Between 1999 and 2001 it was dismantled and reassembled, partly with its old beams, and shif…
Churches & monasteries
Mikołów
Three Baroque domes above a shingle roof are visible from afar in Paniowy, now a district of Mikołów, which has one of the prettiest wooden churches in Upper Silesia. Work on the log-built Church of Saints Peter and Paul began in 1757, but…
Churches & monasteries
Krotoszyn
The little wooden church on ul. Więźniów Politycznych looks more like an Orthodox church than a typical church in Greater Poland: it is built on a Greek-cross plan, with an octagonal dome and bell turret rising over the centre. The town's…
Churches & monasteries
Lelów
The wooden Church of St Giles in Podlesie stands in a quiet village on the northern edge of Silesian Voivodeship, in the Włoszczowa Basin, in Lelów municipality. From outside it is a modest, board-clad church under a shingle roof, but the…
Churches & monasteries
Olsztyn
The parish of Zrębice appears in the Peter's Pence registers as early as 1334, under the name "Sdrzambicze" – a place cleared of scrub and forest. The wooden Church of St Giles that stands here today was built in 1789, and beside it surviv…
Churches & monasteries
Koszęcin
The wooden Church of St John the Baptist in Brusiek stands at the edge of a forest village in Lubliniec County, in the municipality of Koszęcin. According to dendrochronological research it dates from 1593, making it one of the oldest monu…
Churches & monasteries
Buk
On a small mound in Buk, where a fortified settlement may have stood before the town was founded, the larch-wood Holy Cross Church has stood since 1760 – a rare example of a timber church on a Greek-cross plan, with four equal arms and a f…
Churches & monasteries
Zbrosławice
On a cemetery hill in Księży Las, between Pyskowice and Tarnowskie Góry, stands the wooden Church of St Michael the Archangel, begun in 1497–1498. It is one of the oldest wooden churches in Upper Silesia – a late-Gothic building with shing…