Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Zamość
The Armenian Houses on the Great Market Square in Zamość (say "ZAH-moshch") are the most colorful row of buildings in this UNESCO-listed Renaissance town, and they are home to the Zamość Museum. Built in the 17th century for wealthy Armeni…
Landmarks
Kazimierz Dolny
The Przybyła Brothers' Townhouses in Kazimierz Dolny (roughly "kah-ZHEE-myesh DOL-nee") are two Renaissance merchant houses on the town's Market Square whose carved facades have become the symbol of this small Vistula River town in eastern…
Viewpoints
Józefów
In the limestone walls of the Babia Dolina quarry in Józefów, a sharp-eyed visitor can find clam shells about 20 million years old – from the Miocene, when conditions here resembled today's Great Barrier Reef. Stone has been quarried here…
Viewpoints
Kazimierz Dolny
Every old townhouse, granary and wall in Kazimierz Dolny can be traced back to one place – the quarry on ul. Krakowska. The pale rock, known locally as opoka, was extracted from an open pit until the early 1980s. Once the quarry closed, it…
Viewpoints
Susiec
In the pine forest on the south-eastern slope of Krzyżowa Góra, a wide, pale basin of a disused quarry opens up. Its walls, about 200 m long and more than ten metres high, show a cross-section of the Roztocze hills like a geology textbook,…
Churches & monasteries
Lublin
The Holy Trinity Chapel in Lublin is a Gothic royal chapel inside Lublin Castle whose walls and vaults are entirely covered with Byzantine-Ruthenian frescoes completed in 1418. A Western Gothic building painted in the style of an Orthodox…
Churches & monasteries
Zamość
Zamość Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of the Resurrection and St. Thomas the Apostle, is a Renaissance church founded by Jan Zamoyski and designed by Bernardo Morando, the Italian architect behind the whole town of Zamość (say "ZAH-mosh…
Landscape parks
Kazimierz Dolny
Kazimierz Landscape Park (Kazimierski Park Krajobrazowy) is the oldest protected landscape park in Poland's Lublin region, wrapped around the historic river town of Kazimierz Dolny (say "KAH-zhee-myesh DOL-nee"). It protects a wild, unregu…
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…
Churches & monasteries
Lublin
The Dominican Basilica in Lublin – officially the Basilica of St. Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr – is one of the oldest churches in Lublin and one of the most rewarding stops in the city's Old Town. Behind a Renaissance stepped gable lie…
Churches & monasteries
Kazimierz Dolny
The white bulk of the parish church closes off Kazimierz Dolny's Market Square like a stage backdrop: both sides of the square were laid out so that their lines meet at the church. The Church of St John the Baptist and St Bartholomew stand…
Churches & monasteries
Lubartów
Above the main entrance of Lubartów's parish church hangs a black cartouche with a Latin inscription naming the man who paid for it – Prince Paweł Karol Sanguszko. The Baroque Basilica of St Anne was built in 1733–1738 to a design by Paweł…
Churches & monasteries
Szczebrzeszyn
Before you go in, look at the outer wall of the chancel: in a niche sits a stone slab with the Zamoyski coat of arms and the Latin act founding the church. The church was built in 1610–1620 in the style known as the Lublin Renaissance, and…
Churches & monasteries
Janowiec
For several decades of the 16th century, two denominations worshipped side by side in this church: Catholics in the old Gothic part and Calvinists in the new section added by the Firlej family. Only towards the end of the century were arch…
Churches & monasteries
Gołąb
From a distance it looks like a three-aisled basilica, but that is an illusion: the low "side aisles" are really a thickening of the walls that hides gun-ports. The church in Gołąb combines an Italian order, Netherlandish decoration and th…
Churches & monasteries
Kazimierz Dolny
The Church of the Annunciation and the Franciscan (Reformati) Monastery in Kazimierz Dolny is a hilltop religious complex above the Market Square, known for its covered oak staircase and a venerated 400-year-old painting of the Annunciatio…
Amusement parks
Ułęż
Instead of merry-go-rounds and plastic slides – wooden structures, pine cones under bare feet and a mud kitchen by a pond. Explorers' Forest (Las Odkrywców) in Ułęż (Ryki County) is a family adventure park laid out in 6 hectares of real wo…
Landmarks
Lublin
The Lublin Underground Route (Lubelska Trasa Podziemna) is a nearly 300-meter (1,000-foot) tourist trail through old merchants' cellars beneath the Market Square and townhouses of Lublin's Old Town. You descend up to 9–12 m (30–40 ft) belo…
Gardens
Janowiec
A few kilometres from Kazimierz Dolny, in the village of Trzcianki near Janowiec, lies Poland's first family theme park. Magiczne Ogrody – the Magic Gardens – opened on 23 May 2014 on 18 hectares of landscaped ground planted with around a…
Landmarks
Kazimierz Dolny
Mięćmierz ("MYENCH-myesh") is a former rafting and fishing village on the Vistula, now part of Kazimierz Dolny, famous for its thatched cottages and a wooden post mill perched on the riverbank escarpment. Tucked where three ravines meet, a…
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…
Historic sites
Bełżec
Bełżec was the first of the three German death camps of "Operation Reinhard", and the place where the Germans developed the killing methods later used at Sobibór and Treblinka. Between March and December 1942 some 450,000 Jews were murdere…
Historic sites
Sobibór
The Sobibór Museum and Memorial is a branch of the State Museum at Majdanek, set on the grounds of a Nazi German extermination camp that operated in occupied Poland in 1942 and 1943. Visitors walk a memorial avenue through pine forest, see…
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…