Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Włodawa
The Synagogue Complex Museum in Włodawa (say vwo-DAH-vah) is a unique group of three former Jewish community buildings in eastern Poland. Its centerpiece is the 18th-century Great Synagogue, where a neo-Baroque Torah ark with polychrome de…
Museums
Susiec
In Oseredek, a village adjoining Susiec, you will find the only firefighting museum in the Lublin province. It holds nearly 500 exhibits – from hand-operated and horse-drawn fire pumps to the fire engine the museum's founder once drove to…
Museums
Kazimierz Dolny
The Natural History Museum in Kazimierz Dolny occupies a striking late-16th-century granary on the Vistula, and it is one of the best things to do in Kazimierz Dolny with kids or on a rainy day. Inside, exhibits explain the river gorge, th…
Museums
Kazimierz Dolny
The Museum of Goldsmithing Art in Kazimierz Dolny is a branch of the Vistula Museum that describes itself as the only museum of its kind in Poland. Set in the historic cellars of the museum's main building on the Market Square, it displays…
Palaces
Radzyń Podlaski
The Potocki Palace in Radzyń Podlaski (say RAH-jin pod-LAH-skee) is one of the most beautiful Rococo residences in Poland: the work of the architect Jakub Fontana with sculpture by Jan Chryzostom Redler, set in a park with a canal and pond…
Museums
Lublin
On the vaulted ceiling of a cellar beneath the red house at Rynek 8 in Lublin stands a naked Fortune on a globe, holding a cloth whipped by the wind. Around her play out scenes about marriage, folly and love, copied from a fashionable Germ…
Caves
Chełm
The Chełm Chalk Tunnels (say HWEM, with a soft h) are a maze of passages cut into chalk beneath the Old Town of Chełm in eastern Poland, billed as unique in Europe. Locals mined chalk here for centuries, and part of the old workings is now…
Landmarks
Zamość
Zamość Town Hall is the defining landmark of Zamość (say "ZAH-moshch"), the Renaissance planned town in southeastern Poland. Set into the north side of the Great Market Square, it rises to a 52-meter (170 ft) clock tower and is fronted by…
Historic sites
Zamość
The Zamość Rotunda is a circular 19th-century gun battery that became a German Gestapo prison and execution site during World War II. Today it is the Mausoleum of the Martyrdom of the Zamość Region, a memorial museum surrounded by a vast c…
Churches & monasteries
Krasnobród
At the heart of the baroque shrine in Krasnobród is an image smaller than a postcard – just 9 × 14 cm. According to tradition it was found in 1649 in the mud of a site ravaged by Cossacks, and during the Second World War parishioners smugg…
Landmarks
Puławy
The Temple of the Sibyl in Puławy (say "poo-WAH-vih") is a circular neoclassical temple perched above an old arm of the Vistula River in the park of the Czartoryski Palace — and the birthplace of Poland's first museum. Built in 1798–1801 t…
Landmarks
Szczebrzeszyn
The pink building with a high mansard roof on ul. Sądowa was the main synagogue of Szczebrzeszyn's Jewish community. It was built in the early 17th century in the late Renaissance style, on the site of an even older synagogue. It survived…
Landmarks
Zamość
The Zamość Synagogue is one of the finest Renaissance synagogues in Poland and a powerful reminder of the Jewish community that helped shape this UNESCO-listed planned town in the Lublin region. Built in the early 17th century on the initi…
Fortifications
Zamość
Zamość Fortress, and in particular its restored Bastion VII with the outwork known as the Nadszaniec (a raised cavalier), is the best place to see how this Renaissance "ideal city" in southeastern Poland was defended. A guided underground…
Viewpoints
Lublin
The Trinitarian Tower in Lublin is the Neo-Gothic bell tower of the city's cathedral and the highest viewpoint in the Old Town: from its terrace, about 40 m (130 ft) up, you can see Lublin in all four directions, from the castle to the mai…
Castles
Lublin
Lublin Castle is the single best place to start exploring Lublin (say "LOO-bleen"), the largest city in eastern Poland. On one hilltop you'll find a 13th-century Romanesque tower, a Gothic royal chapel covered in Byzantine-style frescoes f…
Castles
Biała Podlaska
The Radziwiłł Palace and Park Complex in Biała Podlaska (say BYA-wah pod-LAH-skah) is a former magnate residence with star-shaped bastion fortifications in eastern Poland, today a park with a historic gate, towers, a chapel and a museum. T…