Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Gardens
Zakopane
Rówień Krupowa is a large, flat meadow in the very centre of Zakopane, right next to the lower end of Krupówki street. From its lawns you can see Giewont and Gubałówka, and through the year it hosts the town's biggest outdoor events, from…
Viewpoints
Klucze
The Wind Rose (Róża Wiatrów) is a wooden viewing platform in Klucze whose arms run straight down onto the sand of the Błędów Desert. From the deck you look over open stretches of the largest area of drifting sand in Poland, and a few steps…
Old towns & squares
Kraków
Kraków's Main Market Square (Rynek Główny, say: RIH-nek GWOO-vnih) is the heart of the Old Town and one of the largest medieval town squares in Europe – roughly 200 by 200 meters, about 10 acres, laid out when Kraków received its town char…
Old towns & squares
Wieliczka
On Wieliczka's Upper Market Square the paving suddenly seems to open up and miners climb out of the crevice. This is "Salt World", a three-dimensional painting covering 350 m² and regarded as the largest work of its kind in Poland. The squ…
Old towns & squares
Ciężkowice
Ciężkowice is one of the few small towns in Lesser Poland where wooden houses with arcades have survived around the market square – which is why it features on the Lesser Poland Wooden Architecture Route. In the middle stands a Neoclassica…
Old towns & squares
Krościenko nad Dunajcem
The market square in Krościenko nad Dunajcem measures about 120 by 70 metres – larger than the Old Town Market Square in Warsaw. It was laid out when the town was founded in 1348 and still keeps its medieval plan: a town hall in the middle…
Old towns & squares
Lanckorona
The market square in Lanckorona slopes so steeply that it is considered the steepest on the Amber Route, with a gradient of about 9.5%. It is lined with wooden, shingle-roofed houses with deep arcades and small windows, rebuilt after a gre…
Old towns & squares
Maków Podhalański
On the rim of a fountain sits a bronze woman in folk dress, bent over her embroidery, while water spurts from three stone poppy heads behind her. It sums up what Maków Podhalański is known for: white embroidery and the poppy in its coat of…
Old towns & squares
Nowy Sącz
The Main Market Square in Nowy Sącz (Rynek, roughly "NO-vih SONCH") is the historic heart of this southern Polish city and one of the largest market squares in the country – second only to Kraków's in the Małopolska region. A grand, freshl…
Old towns & squares
Nowy Targ
Nowy Targ Market Square is a 138 × 110 m rectangle – about 1.5 ha – a square built to suit a town founded for trade. It was laid out in 1346, when the town received its charter, and at its centre stands a 19th-century town hall with a cloc…
Old towns & squares
Olkusz
The Market Square in Olkusz (say "OL-koosh") is the heart of Poland's old "Silver Town," a medieval silver and lead mining center about 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Kraków. Since a makeover completed in 2013, the square has been car-free,…
Old towns & squares
Oświęcim
Oświęcim Market Square (Rynek Główny; the town's name is pronounced roughly "osh-VYEN-cheem") is the heart of a medieval Polish town whose German name, Auschwitz, became synonymous with the Holocaust. Most visitors come only for the Memori…
Old towns & squares
Piwniczna-Zdrój
When fire swept through Piwniczna in 1876, the only thing to survive from the well on the market square was the statue of St Florian, patron saint of firefighters, which fell into the water. Today it stands on the rebuilt cistern in the mi…
Old towns & squares
Skała
In the middle of the square stands an unusual monument: a bronze group – a duke, nuns, a mounted retinue – frozen at the moment the town was born. Skała is one of the oldest towns in Lesser Poland, and its market square with radiating stre…
Old towns & squares
Stary Sącz
The market square of Stary Sącz looks just as you would picture a small Galician town: low, mostly 19th-century houses, a well beneath lime trees, and paving of Dunajec river cobbles that took 11 years to lay. It is the centre of one of Po…
Old towns & squares
Tarnów
Tarnów Market Square (Tarnów is pronounced roughly "TAR-noof") is the heart of a city that Poles like to call the "pearl of the Renaissance." Laid out in 1330, the square is lined with arcaded and gabled townhouses and centered on a striki…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Above the Łagiewniki district rises a white, elliptical building shaped like a boat, with a slender tower topped by a cross beside it. This is the Basilica of Divine Mercy, the newest part of a shrine that pilgrims from around the world ca…
Churches & monasteries
Ślemień
The story of Jasna Górka begins with a miracle that – as the parish itself admits – someone decided to "make". According to tradition, in the mid-14th century a highlander from Ślemień, back from a pilgrimage to Częstochowa, dipped a holy…
Churches & monasteries
Limanowa
The stone basilica with its 60-metre tower dominates the centre of Limanowa and is the main Marian shrine of the Island Beskids. Its altar holds a 14th-century Pietà carved from limewood, crowned in 1966 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, and the…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Our Lady of Fatima Sanctuary at Krzeptówki (kshep-TOOF-kee) in Zakopane is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Tatra region and a church closely tied to Pope John Paul II. Local highlanders built it as a thank-offering af…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
On 13 May 1950, a group of lay people who had just finished a retreat in Trzebinia decided not to go home but to spend the whole night praying in front of a grotto. This was the first of the Fatima vigils for which the Basilica of the Sacr…
Churches & monasteries
Maków Podhalański
Above Maków Podhalański, a small town on the Skawa river in the Maków Beskids, rises the Church of the Transfiguration – the shrine of Our Lady of Maków, venerated as Guardian and Queen of Families. The main altar holds a 16th-century pain…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
Miners have made pilgrimages to Płoki since the Middle Ages – hence the unusual title of its Madonna: Our Lady, Patroness of Working Families. The high altar of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary holds a 15th-century image of th…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
Drive into Zakopane from the Olcza side and you will see a church whose roof is made up of five segments of unequal height. From the side they look like hands joined in prayer, and at the same time like steep highland roofs and Tatra peaks…