Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Gardens
Strzelce Opolskie
Count Andrzej Maria Renard was so taken with English landscape gardens that he sent his gardener to London to study them. The result can still be seen in Strzelce Opolskie: a historic landscape park of roughly 62–65 ha (sources differ), wi…
Gardens
Świerklaniec
Around 200 hectares of greenery, more than 8 ha of ponds and canals, and avenues laid out in the spirit of Peter Joseph Lenné: Świerklaniec Park is one of the finest landscape parks in Upper Silesia. It was the setting of the Henckel von D…
Landscape parks
Poznań
A park in Poznań's Łazarz district once had a statue of a US president sculpted by Gutzon Borglum – the same artist who carved the presidents' faces into Mount Rushmore. The Germans destroyed the statue, but Wilson Park still tells an inte…
Gardens
Lubin
A Tyrannosaurus among century-old oaks, white-tailed eagles and capercaillies in aviaries, and next to them a wild riverside forest that nobody touches with an axe. Wrocławski Park is the oldest and most valuable park in Lubin in Lower Sil…
Gardens
Złoty Potok
In the park at Złoty Potok stands a memorial boulder with an inscription recalling that Jan Kiepura, later a world-famous tenor, attended the nursery school run here by Countess Stefania Raczyńska. It is a good starting point for a walk th…
Gardens
Konstancin-Jeziorna
For half a century, from 1900 to 1952, the Wilanów narrow-gauge railway ran from Plac Unii Lubelskiej in Warsaw to the Spa Park in Konstancin. A hydrotherapy centre now stands where the station was, but the English-style park laid out arou…
Gardens
Busko-Zdrój
Busko-Zdrój owes its fame to sulphurous waters, and its green heart is the Spa Park — a fenced bath garden covering 16 ha in the south of the town. At its centre stand Henryk Marconi's classicist Baths of 1836, while the new western part o…
Gardens
Ciechocinek
The Spa Park, also called the Main Park, is the largest of Ciechocinek's four parks, covering about 19 ha. You stroll here among old trees and wooden buildings in the “Swiss style” that has been the spa's trademark since the 19th century.…
Gardens
Goczałkowice-Zdrój
The Spa Park in Goczałkowice-Zdrój is the green heart of one of only two spa resorts in the Silesian Voivodeship (the other is Ustroń). Historic pavilions from the second half of the 19th century stand along its paths, and the most valuabl…
Gardens
Kudowa-Zdrój
Just beyond the pond at the western end of the Spa Park in Kudowa-Zdrój runs the border with the Czech Republic – that is how close to the border the green heart of this Sudeten spa town lies. The historic park, covering 12.97 hectares, wa…
Gardens
Nałęczów
Nałęczów Spa Park (say nah-WEN-choof) is a historic 25-hectare spa park in the middle of the town of Nałęczów in eastern Poland, with a pond and "Love Island", a small river, shady avenues and the Małachowski Palace. If you want a peaceful…
Gardens
Polanica-Zdrój
The Spa Park in Polanica-Zdrój is home to 19 tree species from North America – among them Weymouth pine, silver maple and Douglas fir – and 15 of its trees are protected natural monuments. Almost 13 hectares of greenery right in the centre…
Gardens
Świnoujście
The Spa Park in Świnoujście (Park Zdrojowy; say "shvee-no-OOYSH-cheh") is a historic landscaped park between the port town center and the seaside spa district on the island of Usedom. In the 1820s Peter Joseph Lenné, the celebrated royal g…
Gardens
Szczawno-Zdrój
Every day at noon and at 20:00, Henryk Wieniawski's "Polish Song" rings out from the Anna Tower above the Spa Park in Szczawno-Zdrój – the violinist is the patron of the park and of a festival named after him. Founded in 1812, it is the to…
Gardens
Białystok
The parks of Białystok (pronounced roughly "bya-WIS-tok") are the easiest way to understand why this northeastern Polish city calls itself one of the greenest in the country. Right in the center, a few minutes' walk from the main square, a…
Nature
Tykocin
It all started with a hurricane. In 1991 a storm snapped the trees around the old Pentowo estate on the edge of Tykocin, and white storks quickly moved onto the jagged trunks. Today more than 30 pairs nest here, on poles, roofs, trees and…
Gardens
Wrocław
The Pergola and Multimedia Fountain in Wrocław (say "VROTS-wahf") is one of the city's favorite free things to do: a vine-covered, half-oval colonnade from 1913 wraps around a pond where Poland's largest multimedia fountain has danced to m…
Landmarks
Nysa
A few steps from Nysa's market square, at the start of Wrocławska Street, stands a well regarded as a masterpiece of Baroque wrought ironwork. The Beautiful Well of 1686 has a forged casing more than 5 metres high, crowned by the gilded do…
Monuments & mounds
Sandomierz
The Ring in Sandomierz is one of the town's most unusual monuments: an openwork wrought-iron setting holding a huge cabochon of striped flint, in which you can see the letter "S" from Sandomierz's logo. The structure weighs 80 kg and has s…
Nature
Tylicz
Tylicz sits on deposits of naturally carbonated mineral water, and you can taste several springs for free, straight from the pipe. The best known is Bradowiec, called the Spring of Love – a wooden gazebo by a stream on the road to Powroźni…
Gardens
Kraków
Planty Park in Kraków (Polish: Planty, "PLAHN-ti") is the historic green ring, roughly 4 km (2.5 miles) long, that wraps around the city's Old Town. It was laid out where the medieval walls and moat once stood, and today it is the most ple…
Viewpoints
Stary Sącz
The spiral viewing platform on top of Dzielnica hill (539 m) in Wola Krogulecka has a shape that gave it its popular name — the "Snail" (Ślimak). The walkway curves upward above the slope, and from the top you look down on the Poprad valle…
Viewpoints
Trzęsacz
When the viewing platform in Trzęsacz opened in 2009, its tip reached a dozen or so metres beyond the shoreline – today, after the beach was widened with pumped sand, the beach extends further than the end of the structure. The white steel…
Viewpoints
Pyrzowice
The plane-spotting platforms at Katowice Airport in Pyrzowice (say: pih-zho-VEE-tseh) are two free, purpose-built viewing decks where you can watch and photograph airliners taking off, landing and taxiing at close range. The airport built…