Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Rokitno
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Rokitno (pronounced "roh-KEET-noh") is the main Marian shrine of the Zielona Góra-Gorzów diocese and a Baroque basilica built between 1746 and 1762, declared a Polish Historic Monument in November 2024. Its hig…
Churches & monasteries
Podzamcze
On the road from Ogrodzieniec to Pilica, in Podzamcze near the ruins of Ogrodzieniec Castle, a bright chapel with a glazed front stands beneath a limestone crag. This is the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Rock, whose story begins with a vill…
Churches & monasteries
Zawiercie
In Skarżyce, a separate village until 1977 and now part of Zawiercie, stands a church you could not mistake for any other in the Jura. Three white chapel rotundas, symbolising the Holy Trinity, adjoin a 12th-century stone tower. The Church…
Churches & monasteries
Skępe
The sanctuary in Skępe is a late-Gothic Bernardine church and friary with four wings of Baroque cloisters, born of a vision during a plague in 1495. The small statue venerated here, Our Lady Expecting, shows Mary awaiting a child, which is…
Churches & monasteries
gmina Pilica
The painting before which pilgrims pray in Pilica-Biskupice measures just 37.5 × 25 cm, and according to tradition it was found in a roadside inn by a bishop who stumbled upon two boards that together formed an image of the Virgin. Today t…
Churches & monasteries
Augustów
The Sanctuary of Our Lady in Studzieniczna (roughly "stoo-dzhen-EECH-nah") is the most important pilgrimage site of the Augustów area in northeastern Poland: a wooden church and a white chapel on a former island in Lake Studzieniczne, abou…
Churches & monasteries
Częstochowa
Pauline monks have lived on this limestone hill in Częstochowa since 1382, when Duke Władysław of Opole brought them from Hungary. The monastery holds the icon of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. It is the most important pilgrimage site f…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
Drive into Zakopane from the Olcza side and you will see a church whose roof is made up of five segments of unequal height. From the side they look like hands joined in prayer, and at the same time like steep highland roofs and Tatra peaks…
Churches & monasteries
Piaski
A copy of Venice's Santa Maria della Salute rises above the fields of Greater Poland near Gostyń. Its dome is 17 m wide and 50 m high, and it is regarded as the largest dome in Poland. Strictly speaking, the basilica and the Oratorian mona…
Churches & monasteries
Pacanów
Pacanów is best known for the cartoon goat Koziołek Matołek, but the little town also has one of the oldest church pedigrees in Poland. The Basilica of St Martin – also the Sanctuary of the Dying Lord Jesus – stands on the site of a church…
Churches & monasteries
Przyrów
On the traditional pilgrim route to Jasna Góra, about 35 km east of Częstochowa, a late Gothic wooden figure of St Anne with the Virgin and Child has been venerated for more than five hundred years. Around it grew a Baroque monastery compl…
Churches & monasteries
Kamień Śląski
The Shrine of St. Hyacinth in Kamień Śląski (roughly "KAH-myen SHLON-skee") is a restored Baroque palace in southern Poland where, according to tradition, St. Hyacinth (Jacek Odrowąż) was born in 1183. The Dominican friar became one of med…
Churches & monasteries
Dukla
The Shrine of St. John of Dukla (DOOK-lah) is a baroque Bernardine church and monastery in the small town of Dukla, in the Carpathian foothills of southeast Poland. It is the main place of devotion to St. John of Dukla, a medieval friar ca…
Churches & monasteries
Kalisz
On 29 April 1945, Polish priests imprisoned in Dachau expected to be executed – instead, they lived to see liberation. Believing they owed their survival to St Joseph, more than 300 priests came to his image in Kalisz on a pilgrimage of th…
Churches & monasteries
Brzesko
Szczepanów, a village a few kilometres from Brzesko, is by tradition the birthplace of St Stanislaus of Szczepanów, Bishop of Kraków and patron saint of Poland. The brick neo-Gothic basilica with its tall tower encloses a Gothic church fro…
Churches & monasteries
Bardo
On the high altar of the Baroque basilica in Bardo stands a figure that is easy to miss: it is just 43 cm tall. This is the Romanesque Enthroned Madonna from the 12th century, regarded as the oldest wooden sculpture in Lower Silesia and a…
Churches & monasteries
Czerna
Above the church portal in Czerna is a Latin inscription praising blessed solitude, and it sums up the place well. For almost two centuries the Discalced Carmelite monastery in the Eliaszówka Valley was a hermitage closed to lay people. To…
Churches & monasteries
Pruchnik
According to tradition, in 1680 a poor widow carried her child, bitten by an adder, up the hill, washed him with water from the spring below an image of the Virgin hanging on a tree – and the boy recovered. That story marked the beginning…
Churches & monasteries
Koziegłowy
The image of St Anthony in Koziegłówki was painted in Rome and blessed by Pope Pius V in 1568. It reached this village in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland in the 17th century and now hangs in a church that looks more like an Italian basilica…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Old Church in Zakopane (Stary Kościół, pronounced roughly "STAH-ri KOSH-choow"), officially the Church of Our Lady of Częstochowa, is the oldest parish church in Poland's best-known mountain resort. This small wooden church on Kościeli…
Churches & monasteries
Święta Lipka
The Sanctuary of Święta Lipka (say "SHVYEN-tah LEEP-kah", meaning "Holy Linden") is a Baroque pilgrimage basilica in Poland's Warmia and Masuria lake district, run by the Jesuits. Its pink-and-ochre facade, arcaded cloisters and a famous o…
Churches & monasteries
Częstochowa
The Jasna Góra Tower in Częstochowa (pronounced roughly yahs-nah GOO-rah, chen-stoh-HOH-vah) is the 106.3 m bell tower of Poland's most important pilgrimage shrine, home of the Black Madonna icon. From April to November you can climb it fo…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
St. Mary's Tower in Kraków (KRAH-koof), known locally as the Hejnalica (hey-nah-LEE-tsah), is the taller of the two towers of St. Mary's Basilica on the Main Market Square. At 82 m (269 ft) it dominates the Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritag…
Churches & monasteries
Chełmno
On the very edge of the escarpment above the Vistula valley stands a convent that has belonged in turn to Cistercian nuns, Benedictine nuns and the Sisters of Charity since the 13th century. Its brick gables and tower shape the skyline of…