Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Brzeg
Much of the high altar in this church is painted – the columns, cornices and scenes in the chancel are an illusion created by a Jesuit's brush. The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Brzeg is a former Jesuit church whose vault a…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Kraków
The entire nave vault springs from a single column in the middle of the church and spreads overhead like the crown of a tree. The Church of the Holy Cross, next to the Słowacki Theatre, is one of the purest Gothic buildings in Kraków, and…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Przemyśl
In one of the frescoes in the nave, the army of the Prince of Transylvania besieges Przemyśl, and the town is saved through the intercession of St Vincent, whose relics the Franciscans here have kept since the 16th century. The Church of S…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Grodków
Above the early-Gothic chancel of Grodków's parish church lies a puzzle: when it was raised to the height of the nave in the late Middle Ages, the builders did not take down the old vault but simply built an unfinished upper storey above i…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Paczków
St. John the Evangelist's Church in Paczków (say “PATCH-koof”) is a Gothic church that was turned into a fortress in the 16th century, and it still looks the part: a brick hall crowned by a white Renaissance parapet with swallowtail merlon…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Białystok
In the Wysoki Stoczek district of Białystok stands a church that looks Baroque but is only a little over thirty years old. The Church of the Lord's Resurrection was built in 1991–1996 as an echo of a lost church in Berezwecz, in what is no…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Kraków
The Little Market Square (Mały Rynek, say "MAH-wih RIH-nek") in Kraków is a long, cobbled square tucked directly behind St. Mary's Basilica – a calmer sidekick to the vast Main Market Square and one of the oldest trading spots in the city.…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Kłodzko
According to a 17th-century chronicler, in 1286 every village around Kłodzko had to hand over eggs — the whites went into the mortar for building the bridge, while town servants sold the yolks for a heller a spoonful. The Gothic bridge ove…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
gmina Dubeninki
The Stańczyki Viaducts (roughly "stahn-CHIH-kee") are two twin railway bridges deep in the Romincka Forest in the far northeast of Poland's Masuria region, near the town of Gołdap and the Russian border. Their towering concrete arches, abo…
Hidden gemMuseums
Radzionków
The collection includes so-called bread money – currency that, in times of crisis, could only be used to buy bread. It is one of hundreds of curiosities gathered by a single enthusiast. The Bread Museum in Radzionków (today the Museum of B…
Hidden gemMuseums
Sulejówek
The Józef Piłsudski Museum in Sulejówek (say "soo-leh-YOO-vek") is a striking modern museum and a historic family home on the eastern edge of Warsaw. It tells the life story of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the founding father of independent Po…
Hidden gemMuseums
Kościerzyna
In a locomotive shed from 1929 and on the tracks around it stands the largest collection of rail vehicles in northern Poland – about 45 items of rolling stock, from a 1915 steam engine to the prototype of a Polish diesel locomotive. The Ko…
Museums
gmina Łubowo
You reach the island of Ostrów Lednicki by ferry, and waiting for you are walls that date back to Mieszko I, Poland's first historical ruler: the ruins of a stone palace with a chapel and two baptismal pools that make this one of the stron…
Hidden gemMuseums
Białystok
Białystok's town hall was never home to the city authorities – from the start it was a market hall full of stalls. In 1940 the Soviet authorities demolished it to make room for a statue of Stalin, and today's building is a post-war reconst…
Hidden gemViewpoints
Kruszwica
According to the chroniclers, the cruel Prince Popiel was eaten by mice in a tower above Lake Gopło – except that today's Mouse Tower was built almost four hundred years after the legend supposedly took place. It is an octagonal brick towe…
Landscape parks
gmina Stoczek
Introduction The Bug is not a river that stays neatly in place. Across the Nadbużański Landscape Park it still bends through broad meanders, cuts into sandy banks, creates islands and sandbars and leaves old channels behind as oxbow lakes.…
National parks
Ojców
Ojców National Park is Poland's smallest national park – just 21.46 km² – and one of its most varied. It lies about 16 km north of Kraków and protects the Jurassic Prądnik Valley with its limestone crags, caves, beech woods and two castles…
Hidden gemPalaces
Puławy
The Czartoryski Palace in Puławy (say "poo-WAH-vih") is the centerpiece of a palace and landscape park that around 1800 was one of the great cultural hubs of Poland — so much so that Puławy was nicknamed the "Polish Athens". Here Princess…
Hidden gemPalaces
gmina Przygodzice
In the autumn of 1829 the young Fryderyk Chopin spent more than a week in Antonin, playing music with the cello-playing prince, giving lessons to his daughter and writing his Polonaise in C major, Op. 3 for cello and piano. Prince Antoni R…
Hidden gemPalaces
Żywiec
Paintings by Wojciech Kossak and Julian Fałat hung on the walls, the fireplaces came from Italy and the bathroom fittings from England. The Habsburg Palace in Żywiec, also known as the New Castle, was for half a century the main residence…
Hidden gemLandscape parks
Łódź
Łódź is associated with factories and flat plains, yet just beyond its north-eastern edge the land suddenly rises into ravines, beech woods and river springs. Łódź Hills Landscape Park protects the most upland-like scenery in central Polan…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Łódź
The walls of the courtyard at 3 Piotrkowska Street are covered with a mosaic of hundreds of thousands of hand-cut pieces of mirror arranged in shapes that resemble rosebuds. Rose Passage (Pasaż Róży) is the work of artist Joanna Rajkowska,…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Brzeg
Brzeg Town Hall (say "BZHEG") is one of the finest Renaissance town halls in Poland and, together with the Piast castle a few streets away, the reason to stop in this small Silesian town on the Oder. Built in 1569-1577 by the Italian maste…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
gmina Stronie Śląskie
Rudawiec (1,106 m) is not the highest peak in the Bialskie Mountains, yet it made it onto the Crown of Polish Mountains, the popular list of the highest summits of each Polish range. The higher tops — Postawna, Brusek and the Czech Travna…