Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Landmarks
Kraków
The Cloth Hall in Kraków (Sukiennice, say "soo-kyeh-NEE-tseh") is the long Renaissance market hall standing in the middle of the Main Market Square – one of Europe's largest medieval town squares and the centerpiece of Kraków's UNESCO-list…
Palaces
Białystok
In the 19th century more than a hundred statues disappeared from the gardens of Branicki Palace — reportedly because the nude figures might corrupt the pupils of the tsarist Institute for Young Ladies of Noble Birth that had moved into the…
Castles
Będzin
In August 1588 a small castle above the Czarna Przemsza river received Chancellor Jan Zamoyski with 400 hussars, envoys of Emperor Rudolf II and the papal legate Ippolito Aldobrandini — the future Pope Clement VIII. They had come to negoti…
Landmarks
Kraków
The Kraków Barbican (Polish: Barbakan, "BAR-bah-kahn") is a Gothic brick fortress with seven slender turrets, standing in Planty Park just outside St. Florian's Gate. Built at the end of the 15th century as the northernmost outpost of the…
Mountains & peaks
Tarnowskie Góry
The Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Góry (say "tar-NOV-skyeh GOO-rih") is the only underground tourist route in Poland set inside former silver, lead and zinc mines. You descend about 40 m (130 ft) below ground, walk nearly 2 km of old…
Churches & monasteries
Wrocław
Take a close look at the south wall of Wrocław Cathedral and you will see a distinct step in the masonry. It is the mark of a medieval mistake: when the new Gothic nave was built in the 14th century, its axis ended up a dozen or so centime…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
The lower part of the façade of St Andrew's Church has no windows — only narrow arrow slits. They are not decoration: according to the chronicler Jan Długosz, in 1241, during the Mongol invasion, the people of Okół, the settlement below Wa…
Churches & monasteries
Kruszyniany
From a distance it looks like one of the two-towered wooden churches typical of the Podlasie region. Only up close do you notice the crescents on the cupolas and the dark green of the walls — the colour of Islam. Kruszyniany Mosque is the…
Castles
Sucha
For more than forty years Czocha Castle did not appear on any map. From 1952 it housed a military holiday centre, and as a classified military site it was left off official maps until the 1990s — one of the best-known castles in Lower Sile…
Castles
Warszawa
On 12 January 1578, at the wedding of Chancellor Jan Zamoyski and Krystyna Radziwiłł, the manor house at Ujazdów staged the first performance of Jan Kochanowski's "The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys" — regarded as the first tragedy written…
Landmarks
Kraków
The Sigismund Bell (in Polish Dzwon Zygmunta, roughly "dzvon zig-MOON-tah") hangs in the tower of Wawel Cathedral in Kraków and is Poland's most famous bell. Cast more than 500 years ago, it rings only on the most important religious and n…
Castles
Krasiczyn
Krasiczyn Castle (say "krah-SHEE-chin") is one of the finest Renaissance residences in Poland, set in the San River valley about 6 miles (10 km) west of Przemyśl, in the country's far southeast. Its square layout, four very different corne…
Castles
Łańcut
Łańcut Castle (say "WAHN-tsoot") is one of the grandest aristocratic residences in Poland and the jewel of the Podkarpackie region in the country's southeast. For more than three centuries it belonged to two of Poland's most powerful famil…
Churches & monasteries
Łódź
The tallest building in Łódź is not an office tower but a church. The tower of the Archcathedral Basilica of St Stanislaus Kostka at 265 Piotrkowska Street rises 104.5 metres, and the church itself — built of bare, pale-yellow brick — was…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
On 23 June 1597 the Jesuits laid the foundations of a church on Grodzka Street to the music of three choirs, with Mass said under a tent. So began the construction of Kraków's first fully Baroque building, funded by King Sigismund III Vasa…
Technical monuments
Gliwice
The Gliwice Radio Station (pronounced "glee-VEE-tseh") is where World War II was staged before it began. On the evening of August 31, 1939, German SS men disguised as Polish insurgents seized the station and broadcast a fake "Polish attack…
Churches & monasteries
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska (pronounced roughly kal-VAR-ya zeb-zhi-DOV-ska) is a 17th-century pilgrimage park in the hills southwest of Kraków: a Bernardine monastery and basilica plus 42 chapels and churches scattered across wooded slopes, laid…
Landmarks
Warszawa
From the terrace of the Palace of Culture, Złote Tarasy looks like a glass wave spilling between Warsaw Central Station and Złota Street. Beneath its undulating steel-and-glass roof is one of Warsaw's best-known shopping centres, opened on…
Museums
Kraków
Nicolaus Copernicus studied in this building in the 1490s. The Collegium Maius at 15 Jagiellońska Street is the oldest surviving building of the Jagiellonian University and home to its museum: a Gothic courtyard with arcades, rooms where p…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Legend has it that on the spot where the Corpus Christi Basilica now stands, a stolen monstrance was found in a marsh, with mysterious lights burning above it day and night — and the king promised to build a church there. The facts are jus…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
The little church in the corner of Kraków's Main Market Square is older than the square itself — by roughly a century. St Adalbert's Church is one of the oldest stone churches in Poland, with walls dating back to the 11th century. That is…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
The Old Synagogue in Kraków, on Szeroka Street in the historic Jewish district of Kazimierz ("ka-ZHEE-myesh"), is the oldest surviving synagogue building in Poland and one of the most important monuments of Jewish architecture in Europe. F…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
On a small limestone hill above the Vistula, a few hundred metres from Wawel, Bishop Stanislaus of Szczepanów was killed in 1079, according to tradition. The Baroque Basilica of St Michael the Archangel and St Stanislaus, known simply as S…
Churches & monasteries
Świdnica
The tower of Świdnica Cathedral is 101.21 m high — the tallest church tower in the whole of Silesia and the sixth tallest in Poland. Beneath it stands one of the largest churches in Lower Silesia: a Gothic basilica that the Jesuits filled…