Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Skała
The Hermitage of Blessed Salomea in Grodzisko (roughly "groh-JEES-koh") is a small Baroque hilltop sanctuary in Ojców National Park, about 25 km (15 miles) north of Kraków. On a limestone spur above the Prądnik Valley you will find a churc…
Churches & monasteries
Rytwiany
The Golden Forest Hermitage in Rytwiany (Pustelnia Złotego Lasu; say "rit-VYAH-nih") is a former Camaldolese hermit monastery hidden in the Rytwiany Forest of southeastern Poland. A Baroque church, rows of little hermit houses and a gate i…
Churches & monasteries
Wieluń
The low brick walls in the centre of Wieluń trace the outline of the town's oldest parish church – St Michael the Archangel, for centuries the most important church in the Wieluń region. It survived fires and rebuildings but not the war: d…
Churches & monasteries
Siewierz
In the cemetery in Siewierz stands the little stone Church of St John the Baptist – one of the oldest churches in Poland. It was probably built in 1144 or 1164, and the magnate Piotr Włostowic is regarded as its founder. The building measu…
Churches & monasteries
Ogrodzieniec
On a rise in the centre of Giebło, a village in the municipality of Ogrodzieniec, stands the Church of St James the Apostle – one of the oldest Romanesque village churches in Lesser Poland. The exact building date is unknown, but analysis…
Churches & monasteries
Strzelin
Among post-war apartment blocks near the market square in Strzelin stands a small church whose round tower is one of the oldest buildings in Silesia. It is a former Romanesque stone rotunda, built in the 12th or 13th century and later turn…
Churches & monasteries
Gubin
The ruins of the Gubin parish church (say "GOO-been") are what is left of a monumental Gothic church in the middle of a town that was split by the Polish-German border after 1945. The war-damaged building was never rebuilt, but today it is…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Above the Łagiewniki district rises a white, elliptical building shaped like a boat, with a slender tower topped by a cross beside it. This is the Basilica of Divine Mercy, the newest part of a shrine that pilgrims from around the world ca…
Churches & monasteries
Rataje
Górka Klasztorna near Łobżenica is regarded as the oldest Marian sanctuary in Poland. According to tradition, in 1079 the Virgin Mary with the Child appeared here to a shepherd at a well in the Górka Grove. Today it is a complex with a bar…
Churches & monasteries
Ślemień
The story of Jasna Górka begins with a miracle that – as the parish itself admits – someone decided to "make". According to tradition, in the mid-14th century a highlander from Ślemień, back from a pilgrimage to Częstochowa, dipped a holy…
Churches & monasteries
Gietrzwałd
The Gietrzwałd Marian Shrine (gyet-ZHVAHLD) is the only site in Poland where Marian apparitions have been officially approved by the Catholic Church. In the summer of 1877 two girls reported seeing the Virgin Mary here, and today pilgrims…
Churches & monasteries
Kałków
Amid the fields of the Świętokrzyskie region stands a building that looks like a medieval castle, 33 metres high. This is the Golgotha, the heart of the sanctuary in Kałków-Godów and a kind of national pantheon: inside are chapels commemor…
Churches & monasteries
Limanowa
The stone basilica with its 60-metre tower dominates the centre of Limanowa and is the main Marian shrine of the Island Beskids. Its altar holds a 14th-century Pietà carved from limewood, crowned in 1966 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, and the…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Our Lady of Fatima Sanctuary at Krzeptówki (kshep-TOOF-kee) in Zakopane is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Tatra region and a church closely tied to Pope John Paul II. Local highlanders built it as a thank-offering af…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
On 13 May 1950, a group of lay people who had just finished a retreat in Trzebinia decided not to go home but to spend the whole night praying in front of a grotto. This was the first of the Fatima vigils for which the Basilica of the Sacr…
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…
Churches & monasteries
Żarki
According to tradition, in 1382 Duke Władysław of Opole, who was carrying the Black Madonna icon to Jasna Góra, stopped in the forest near Żarki and prayed for water – and a spring gushed from beneath a stone. The Shrine of Our Lady of Leś…
Churches & monasteries
Licheń Stary
The golden dome of Licheń is visible from far across the flat plain near Konin, and the basilica tower rises to 141.5 m. The Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń is now the largest church in Poland, yet the sanctuary began with a small picture h…
Churches & monasteries
Maków Podhalański
Above Maków Podhalański, a small town on the Skawa river in the Maków Beskids, rises the Church of the Transfiguration – the shrine of Our Lady of Maków, venerated as Guardian and Queen of Families. The main altar holds a 16th-century pain…
Churches & monasteries
Pińczów
Pińczów has two faces: its Renaissance market square and Mirów – once a separate little town founded in 1592 by Zygmunt Myszkowski. In Mirów stands the Church of the Visitation with its Franciscan friary, home to the miraculous image of Ou…
Churches & monasteries
Korbielów
The brick church with a red roof in the centre of Korbielów holds a painting that has travelled a long way: from Bohorodczany in Poland's former eastern borderlands, now in Ukraine, to this village below Pilsko. Since 1974 the image of the…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
Miners have made pilgrimages to Płoki since the Middle Ages – hence the unusual title of its Madonna: Our Lady, Patroness of Working Families. The high altar of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary holds a 15th-century image of th…
Churches & monasteries
Dąbrówka Kościelna
The Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Dąbrówka Kościelna (roughly "dom-BROOF-kah kosh-CHEL-nah") is a Marian pilgrimage church in the countryside of Greater Poland. It sits on a hill above a small village between Poznań and Gniezno, Pol…
Churches & monasteries
Lidzbark Warmiński
A Baroque rotunda surrounded by cloisters with corner chapels stands among the fields of Warmia, far from any town. In 1953 the communist authorities imprisoned the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, here – his cell and a memori…