Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Lakes
Szczecin
Emerald Lake (Jezioro Szmaragdowe, roughly "YEZH-oh-roh shmah-RAHG-doh-veh") is a flooded former chalk quarry hidden in the beech woods of the Bukowa Forest, on the eastern edge of Szczecin. It is famous for its green, emerald-tinted water…
Lakes
Turawa
Lake Turawa (Jezioro Turawskie, roughly "too-RAHV-skyeh") is the largest body of water in Poland's Opole region: a reservoir of about 21 km² (8 sq miles) on the Mała Panew River, ringed by pine forest, sandy beaches and holiday resorts. Ly…
Lakes
Olsztyn
Lake Ukiel (pronounced "OO-kyel"), known locally as Krzywe ("the crooked lake"), is the largest lake inside the city of Olsztyn and its favorite summer playground. Covering more than 400 hectares (about 1,000 acres) and reaching 43 meters…
Lakes
Gniezno
Lake Winiary, known to locals simply as "Łazienki" (the Baths), is the largest body of water in Gniezno. It lies north-east of the city centre, between the Tysiąclecia and Winiary housing estates, and in summer serves as the town beach. A…
Lakes
Zielonka
Lake Zielonka lies right in the middle of Puszcza Zielonka Landscape Park, in a large forest clearing around the village of the same name. A nature trail called "Plant Communities around Lake Zielonka" loops round the water, and in a singl…
Lakes
Leśna
Lake Złotnickie is a narrow reservoir, roughly eight kilometres long, on the Kwisa river, held back by a stone dam built a century ago. It lies in the Izera Foothills between Gryfów Śląski and Leśna, right next to a former mining town that…
Churches & monasteries
Krasiczyn
Kalwaria Pacławska (roughly "kahl-VAR-yah pahts-WAHF-skah") is a Franciscan pilgrimage sanctuary on a forested hill about 465 m (1,525 ft) above the Wiar River valley in southeastern Poland, close to the Ukrainian border. Founded in 1665,…
Nature
Lesko
As early as 1896 the Lesko town council resolved that this rock should be a "natural memorial" – which makes the Lesko Stone one of the earliest protected geological monuments in the former Austria-Hungary and in today's Poland. The massiv…
Landmarks
Kazimierz Dolny
The Przybyła Brothers' Townhouses in Kazimierz Dolny (roughly "kah-ZHEE-myesh DOL-nee") are two Renaissance merchant houses on the town's Market Square whose carved facades have become the symbol of this small Vistula River town in eastern…
Nature
Ogrodzieniec
The pale walls of the former quarry of the "Wiek" cement works expose the bed of a Jurassic sea from about 155–160 million years ago – complete with ammonites, belemnites and brachiopods. The pit between Bzów and Ogrodzieniec Castle attrac…
Viewpoints
Józefów
In the limestone walls of the Babia Dolina quarry in Józefów, a sharp-eyed visitor can find clam shells about 20 million years old – from the Miocene, when conditions here resembled today's Great Barrier Reef. Stone has been quarried here…
Nature
Olsztyn
The Olsztyn municipality calls this place an "open book of geology", and it is hard to argue. The disused quarry on Kielniki hill, about 1 km south-east of the castle ruins in Olsztyn near Częstochowa, lays bare the inside of a Jurassic hi…
Nature
Bobrowniki
The disused quarry in Rogoźnik, in the Bobrowniki municipality (Będzin County), is for those who prefer wild, overgrown workings to polished attractions. The village lies in a small basin between the Buczyna and Sadowie hills, and the surr…
Nature
Kozy
The wall of the old quarry in Kozy shows how layers of sandstone and shale – black, green and bluish-grey – settled on the sea floor over millions of years. For more than 80 years stone for roads and railways was extracted here; today the…
Viewpoints
Susiec
In the pine forest on the south-eastern slope of Krzyżowa Góra, a wide, pale basin of a disused quarry opens up. Its walls, about 200 m long and more than ten metres high, show a cross-section of the Roztocze hills like a geology textbook,…
Nature
Janów
Pale rock walls in the middle of a Jura forest look like a western film set – and a western was indeed shot here. But the name of the Warsaw Quarry (Kamieniołom Warszawski) in Siedlec comes from something else: the limestone cut here, rega…
Viewpoints
Gdynia
Kamienna Góra ("ka-MYEN-na GOO-ra," Stone Hill) is a wooded hill right above central Gdynia and the seaside boulevard, with the city's most popular viewpoint. From the terrace beneath a tall cross you look out over the port, the marina, th…
Historic sites
Brusy
In a pine forest near the Kashubian village of Leśno, stone circles rise out of the ground, and on one burial mound stands a boulder whose outline suggests a human figure. This is a cemetery used by several cultures for more than a thousan…
Historic sites
Sulęczyno
In a pine forest by Lake Długie, about 1.5 km south of the village of Węsiory in Kashubia, lies a burial ground with stone circles, barrows and standing stones almost two thousand years old. It was founded in the 70s–80s AD, and archaeolog…
Technical monuments
Bydgoszcz
The Bydgoszcz Canal (Kanał Bydgoski, roughly "KAH-now bid-GOSS-kee") is the oldest working artificial waterway in Poland, a canal opened in 1774 that links the Vistula River basin with the Oder through the city of Bydgoszcz. For visitors,…
Historic sites
Sucha Beskidzka
A walk from the Renaissance castle in Sucha Beskidzka up a forest path ends at a small stone chapel with a tower topped by an onion dome. It stands at about 500 m above sea level on the south-eastern ridge of Kocurowa Góra, also called Mou…
Churches & monasteries
Stary Sącz
A few hundred metres from the Poor Clares' convent in Stary Sącz, beside a spring that legend says was found by St Kinga herself, stands a small masonry chapel from 1779. It replaced an older chapel and was built in thanksgiving for healin…
Churches & monasteries
Zawoja
By the road through Zawoja Policzne stands a small white chapel under a shingled roof that rises into an onion dome with a lantern. This is the Chapel of St John the Baptist, known locally as the brigands' chapel — tradition says it was fo…
Waterfalls
Wisła
The Rodło Cascades (Kaskady Rodła, roughly "kas-KAH-dee ROD-wah") are a chain of about 25 natural waterfalls and rock steps in the Biała Wisełka valley above the mountain resort of Wisła, in southern Poland's Silesian Beskids. The two bigg…