Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Mountains & peaks
Targoszów
Leskowiec is one of the best viewpoints in the Beskid Mały (Little Beskids): from the meadow on its summit you can see Babia Góra, Pilsko and, on a clear day, the Western Tatras. As a schoolboy Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II,…
Mountains & peaks
Wilkowice
The stone mountain hut on Magurka Wilkowicka is the third building on this spot – the two earlier wooden ones burned down within less than ten years. This peak in the Little Beskids (909 m, the fourth highest in the range) has been a favou…
Amusement parks
gmina Torzym
The wooden Wilkołak (Werewolf) roller coaster stands 22 m tall and reaches 71 km/h – a mirror-image copy of Heidi the Ride at Plopsaland De Panne in Belgium. Majaland Kownaty is a family theme park in western Poland's Lubuskie region, buil…
Mountains & peaks
Wisła
Old folk tales say that deep inside this mountain there is a chamber where a rabbit of solid gold sits at a table. Malinów (1,115 m) is a broad, flat summit in the Silesian Beskids, on the boundary between the resort towns of Wisła and Szc…
Coast
Międzyzdroje
The Międzyzdroje Pier is a reinforced-concrete jetty 395 m long, reaching from the beach on Wolin Island far into the Pomeranian Bay. It is the longest concrete pier in Poland and also a marine landing stage: excursion boats moor at its fa…
Landmarks
Kraków
Of the more than three kilometres of medieval walls that once ringed Kraków, only about 200 metres survive – thanks to one professor who argued in the city senate that the walls protected St Mary's Basilica from nasty winds blowing in from…
Museums
Rzeszów
The Bedtime Cartoon Museum in Rzeszów (Muzeum Dobranocek) is devoted to "dobranocki" – the evening cartoons that Polish children waited for before bed for decades. Its display cases on Mickiewicza Street hold original film puppets of Teddy…
Museums
Łódź
The Factory Museum in Łódź tells the story of Izrael Poznański's textile empire on the very spot where it operated – in the former fabric printing works on the site of today's Manufaktura. Here you can see how cotton became yarn and yarn b…
Museums
Zakopane
Jan Kasprowicz bought the wooden villa at Harenda in 1923 from an English painter for 500 pounds, money he had earned translating Shakespeare. He lived here for only three years, until his death in 1926, but his widow Maria kept the house…
Museums
Wrocław
The Pan Tadeusz Museum in Wrocław is a modern storytelling museum run by the Ossolineum, set in the Baroque House under the Golden Sun on the Market Square. Its centerpiece is the only surviving manuscript of "Pan Tadeusz," Adam Mickiewicz…
Museums
Opole
The Museum of Polish Song in Opole tells the story of Polish popular music from the 1920s to the present – inside the Millennium Amphitheatre, the stage of the National Festival of Polish Song. Instead of display cases you get headphones,…
Museums
Nysa
The Nysa District Museum is the oldest museum in Opole Silesia – it has existed since 1897 and since 1984 has occupied the Baroque Bishops' Palace, the former residence of the bishops of Wrocław, who were also dukes of Nysa. Here you will…
Museums
Hel
The Fisheries Museum in Hel is a branch of Poland's National Maritime Museum, set in the oldest building in town: a Gothic brick church from the 15th century right by the harbor on the Hel Peninsula, north of Gdańsk. Inside are traditional…
Museums
Chrzanów
The Irena and Mieczysław Mazaraki Museum in Chrzanów is the regional museum of western Małopolska, housed in a historic manor building that locals call the "Inkwell" (Kałamarz). It covers the area's prehistory, the old town and its Jewish…
Gardens
Warszawa
The University of Warsaw Botanic Garden on Aleje Ujazdowskie is the third-oldest botanic garden in Poland and a green enclave in the centre of the capital, right next to the Royal Łazienki. On about 5 hectares grow some 5,000 plant species…
Museums
Zubrzyca Górna
At the heart of this open-air museum is a manor house that was never moved here: it has stood on this spot since the 17th century. The Orava Ethnographic Park in Zubrzyca Górna was the first open-air museum opened in post-war Poland. On al…
Palaces
Sobótka
The Neo-Renaissance "castle" in Sobótka-Górka, at the foot of Mount Ślęża, hides something far older than its 19th-century turrets: the medieval chapel and church of a former monastery of the Canons Regular of St Augustine. It is one of th…
Palaces
Siedlce
The Ogiński Palace in Siedlce is a classicist residence with a white columned portico, set in Aleksandria Park – the town's most important historic monument. In the 18th century Princess Aleksandra Ogińska turned Siedlce into a centre of E…
Palaces
Bukowiec
Bukowiec Palace is the heart of one of the first landscape parks in Lower Silesia. In the late 18th century Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden turned a Renaissance manor house here into a Neoclassical residence and, inspired by his travels…
Palaces
Kopice
Kopice Palace (say "ko-PEE-tseh") is a romantic Gothic Revival ruin reflected in a pond in a wooded landscape park in Poland's Opole region. Its turrets, gables and lacy stone tracery have earned it nicknames like "Poland's Disneyland," an…
Palaces
Krzyżanowice
Franz Liszt lived and composed in this palace in 1843–1848, and before him Ludwig van Beethoven visited his friend and patron, Prince Karl Lichnowsky. Krzyżanowice Palace, near Racibórz in Upper Silesia, is a neo-Gothic residence with octa…
Palaces
Żyrowa
An American millionaire bought it as a wedding present for his daughter, Kaiser Wilhelm II stayed here, and after the war it was used to treat children at risk of tuberculosis. Żyrowa Palace is one of the largest early Baroque residences i…
Palaces
Włodowice
In July 1683, on his way to the relief of Vienna, King John III Sobieski stopped here. Today all that remains of Włodowice Palace on Krakowska Street is a burnt-out shell with a Baroque gable – the ruin of a residence built in 1669–1681 fo…
Museums
Łódź
The Łódź Palm House is a tropical oasis in Źródliska Park, the city's oldest park: under its glass roof grow around 4,500 specimens of more than 1,100 species and varieties. The most precious are palms that remember the orangeries of Łódź'…