Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Amusement parks
Inwałd
"Świat Marzeń" Miniature Park in Inwałd is a family park with models of 65 famous buildings from Poland and around the world, set between Andrychów and Wadowice. In a single day you can stand beneath the Eiffel Tower, St Peter's Basilica a…
Other
Żywiec
Żywiec's Castle Park covers 26 hectares of historic greenery around the Old Castle and the Habsburg palace, a few minutes' walk from the Market Square. More than 5,000 old trees grow here, and by the canal stands the 18th-century Chinese H…
Other
Kraków
Just a few steps from the bustle of the Main Market Square lies St Mary's Square – an intimate square around St Mary's Basilica where, until the early 19th century, the dead were buried. Pale paving now marks the area of the old cemetery,…
Museums
Wasilków
On almost 30 hectares in Wasilków, just beyond Białystok's northern city limits, stands a village made up of buildings moved here from all over Podlasie: windmills, a watermill, a smithy, cottages of the minor gentry and a Neoclassical man…
Mountains & peaks
Istebna
At Szarcula Pass (about 760 m) rain falling on one side of the ridge ends up in the Vistula and the Baltic Sea, and on the other side flows via the Olza and the Oder. The pass is a shallow saddle in the Barania Góra range, on the main Euro…
Landmarks
Grodków
The tower of Grodków town hall survived the fire that destroyed most of the town in 1833, and seven years later a new building was raised around it. Today the late Neoclassical town hall of 1840 stands in the middle of the market square of…
Landmarks
Kołobrzeg
With its battlements, corner towers and red-brick walls it looks like a small castle, yet it was built from the start as the seat of the town council. Kołobrzeg Town Hall was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the most celebrated archite…
Mountains & peaks
Brenna
Równica is an 884.6 m peak in the Silesian Beskids, rising between the Vistula valley at Ustroń and the Brennica valley at Brenna – the boundary of the two municipalities runs along its ridge. It is known for a wide meadow with a panorama…
Old towns & squares
Szczecin
Rynek Sienny – the Hay Market (roughly "RIH-nek SHYEN-nih") – is the oldest market square in Szczecin and the heart of its rebuilt Old Town. The square is dominated by the brick Gothic Old Town Hall with its lacy, stepped gable, and surrou…
Churches & monasteries
Wasilków
The Święta Woda Sanctuary (roughly "SHVYEN-tah VOH-dah", meaning "Holy Water") in Wasilków, just north of Białystok in northeastern Poland, is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the Podlasie region. A white church of Our Lady of S…
Mountains & peaks
Gruszków
Skalnik (945 m) is the highest peak of the Rudawy Janowickie range and of the Rudawy Landscape Park, but the summit itself hides in spruce forest. For the view, walk a few hundred metres on to the granite tor of Ostra Mała, where steps cut…
Museums
Wolin
Every year in early August hundreds of re-enactors from across Europe arrive on a small island in the Dziwna river to spend a few days living like the people of early medieval Wolin. For the rest of the season the Centre of Slavs and Vikin…
Museums
Olsztynek
The Olsztynek Open-Air Museum (say "ol-SHTIN-ek"), officially the Museum of Folk Architecture – Ethnographic Park, is one of the oldest and largest skansens (open-air museums) in Poland. Spread over about 77 hectares in the Warmia-Masuria…
Churches & monasteries
Poznań
The Cathedral Lock is a nearly 200-year-old piece of the Prussian Poznań Fortress on the River Cybina, right next to Ostrów Tumski, the cathedral island. This former fortified weir, now linked by a glass footbridge to the Gate of Poznań he…
Other
Smerek
Smerek is the westernmost summit of the Połonina Wetlińska ridge and one of the most recognisable peaks in the Bieszczady Mountains: a grassy dome 1,222 m high (some maps give 1,223 m) rising above the villages of Smerek and Wetlina. Its o…
Lakes
Kościelisko
Unlike most Tatra lakes, Smreczyński Staw does not sit in a rocky cirque but in the forest, at 1,226 m above sea level, between the moraines of two former glaciers. Kamienista, Błyszcz and Bystrá rise above the spruces, and a short black-m…
Landmarks
Grudziądz
From the Vistula, the granaries of Grudziądz look like a brick defensive wall: several storeys high, with small windows and massive buttresses. From the town side the very same buildings have only one or two floors – because they stand on…
Historic sites
Łódź
The Old Cemetery in Łódź (Stary Cmentarz, pronounced "STAH-ry TSMEN-tash"; Łódź sounds roughly like "woodge") is the city's oldest surviving burial ground and one of the most striking monuments of its industrial past. On about 21 hectares,…
Museums
Tychy
Tyskie Browarium, officially the Museum of the Tyskie Princely Breweries, is a brewing museum inside a working brewery in Tychy, where beer has been brewed without interruption for almost 400 years. The exhibition fills a restored former P…
Other
gmina Żary
Construction of this tower began on 1 April 1914, the 99th anniversary of Otto von Bismarck's birth, and it was never finished. The Bismarck Tower in Żary (German Bismarckturm Sorau; Żary was the German town of Sorau until 1945) stands in…
Landmarks
Opole
The Piast Tower in Opole is a Gothic brick castle tower on Ostrówek island – one of the oldest monuments of defensive architecture in Poland and a symbol of the city, whose outline appears in TV broadcasts of the song festival from the nea…
Other
Katowice
At the western end of Mickiewicza Street stand two silver-and-gold office towers that in 1981 were the tallest buildings in Poland outside Warsaw. The Stalexport Towers were designed by an architect from Belgrade and built by a Swedish fir…
Lakes
Kraków
Zakrzówek in Kraków is a flooded former limestone quarry with turquoise water framed by white cliffs – one of the most unusual places to relax in any Polish city. It lies in the Dębniki district, a few kilometres from the Main Square, and…
Monuments & mounds
Bydgoszcz
Above the Brda river, by the Jerzy Sulima-Kamiński Bridge, a young man holding a balancing pole has been walking a rope for over twenty years without ever falling. "Przechodzący przez rzekę" ("Man Crossing the River"), known locally as the…