Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Historic sites
Duszniki-Zdrój
The Chopin Manor in Duszniki-Zdrój (say "DOOSH-nee-kee ZDROO-y"), formerly the Spa Theater, is an elegant white pavilion in the spa park of a small resort town in southwestern Poland. In summer 1826 a 16-year-old Frédéric Chopin gave a cha…
Historic sites
Poznań
This small pavilion next to Poznań Główny station was built for Emperor Wilhelm II, yet it went down in history thanks to someone else entirely. On 26 December 1918 crowds gathered here to welcome the pianist and statesman Ignacy Jan Pader…
Historic sites
Pilica
Before the town was moved to a more convenient site in the 14th century, Pilica stood right here, on a small hill above the river now called St Peter's Hill and known as the cradle of Pilica. Some 800 years ago this was the site of the fir…
Historic sites
Lelów
At ul. Ogrodowa 7 in Lelów stands the ohel of David Biderman – the tomb of the tzadik who gave his name to the Lelov Hasidic dynasty. Every year, around the turn of January and February, Hasidim from Israel and the USA come here to pray at…
Historic sites
Byczyna
The Knights' Stronghold in Byczyna is a wooden fortress in Biskupice, on the shore of the Biskupice reservoir "Brzózki" and surrounded by forest. It was built from larch logs as a re-creation of a medieval stronghold and opened in Septembe…
Historic sites
Podzamcze
The Birów Hill Stronghold in Podzamcze is a timber reconstruction of a medieval fortified settlement, built on a rocky limestone hill about 1.5 km (1 mile) from Ogrodzieniec Castle in southern Poland. The palisade, towers and huts stand wh…
Historic sites
Pobiedziska
Gród Pobiedziska (roughly "groot poh-byeh-JEE-skah"; "gród" means a fortified settlement) is a reconstructed early medieval stronghold and family history park in western Poland, halfway between Poznań and Gniezno. Behind its timber palisad…
Historic sites
Międzyzdroje
In Lubin on Wolin Island, about 7 km from Międzyzdroje, an early medieval hillfort sits on the highest cliff above the Szczecin Lagoon. From wooden terraces more than 50 m above sea level you can see the archipelago of 44 islands in the Św…
Historic sites
Olkusz
Less than 3 km west of Olkusz town centre lie the remains of a medieval stronghold: a deep moat, two rings of earthen ramparts and the ruins of the Gothic Church of St John the Baptist. This is where the town's story begins – before Olkusz…
Historic sites
Sobótka
The Będkowice Archaeological Reserve lies at the foot of Mount Ślęża, by the road from Strzegomiany to Będkowice in the Sobótka municipality. It protects an early medieval settlement complex of the Ślężanie tribe: a hillfort from the 8th–1…
Historic sites
Sopot
The Grodzisko in Sopot (say "gro-JEES-ko", meaning "hillfort") is the oldest historic site in this Baltic spa town – the remains of an early medieval Slavic stronghold on a wooded hill about 400 m from the sea. Today it is an open-air arch…
Historic sites
Wiślica
The Wiślica hillfort (in Polish "grodzisko", roughly "gro-JEES-ko"), also called the hillfort "in the meadows", is an early medieval archaeological site on a low island ringed by the Nida River and its old channels, a few hundred meters so…
Historic sites
Kalisz
Before Kalisz moved to the right bank of the Prosna, its heart was a fortress on a marshy island in Zawodzie. The stronghold, built in the 860s, was one of the key centres of the early Piast state, Poland's first ruling dynasty, and in the…
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…
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…
Historic sites
Cieszyn
On Hażlaska Street in Cieszyn, a few hundred metres apart, lie two Jewish cemeteries. The older, founded in 1647, is among the oldest Jewish burial grounds in Poland and one of the few that remained in continuous use for more than 250 year…
Historic sites
Józefów
On a hillside off Kamienna Street, on the way to the old quarries, lies the Jewish cemetery – the kirkut – of Józefów in the Biłgoraj district. On about 1 ha nearly 400 matzevot (tombstones) or their fragments survive, carved from the same…
Historic sites
Bolesław
On the road from Sławków to Krzykawka, about 2.5 km from Sławków's market square, lies a Jewish cemetery where, according to the county authorities, more than 300 gravestones survive. It formally belonged to the Jewish community of Sławków…
Historic sites
Świdnica
On 12 November 1989, in the farmyard at Krzyżowa, Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl exchanged the sign of peace during the Mass of Reconciliation. The gesture symbolically closed the darkest chapter…
Historic sites
Świerklaniec
On the north side of the neo-Romanesque church in Nakło Śląskie stands a small brick building on a Greek-cross plan, with a heraldic cartouche above the entrance. It is the family mausoleum of the Catholic line of the Henckel von Donnersma…
Historic sites
Kopice
Next to the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Kopice near Grodków stands the Neoclassical mausoleum of Joanna and Hans Ulrich Schaffgotsch. It is the grave of the "Silesian Cinderella" – a girl from a poor family who, at the ag…
Historic sites
Jedwabne
On the edge of Jedwabne, on ul. Krasickiego, stone blocks mark out a rectangle on the grass. It is the outline of the barn where the town's Jewish residents and Jews from nearby were burned alive on 10 July 1941. The 2001 memorial and the…
Historic sites
Kruszyniany
Not far from the green wooden mosque, in a pine grove on the edge of Kruszyniany, lies one of only a handful of working Muslim cemeteries in Poland. The mizar of the Polish Tatars is more than three hundred years old and still receives bur…