Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Nature
Rabsztyn
On 28 June 1947, despite an early and warm spring, the speleologist Kazimierz Kowalski found plenty of ice at the bottom of a rock shaft in Cisowa Skała – that is how Omszała Studnia (Mossy Well), one of the larger caves of today's Pazurek…
Nature
Czarnorzeki
On a wooded ridge between Krosno and Rzeszów, sandstone pillars rise out of the forest, in places more than 20 metres high. Local legend says they are enchanted spinners – girls turned to stone for spinning flax on a holy day ("prządki" me…
Nature
Dubiecko
About 2.5 km from Dubiecko, among the fields and woods of the foothills, lies a raised bog where the insect-eating round-leaved sundew grows and rare garganeys can be seen. The Broduszurki reserve has protected it since 1996, and a nature…
Historic sites
Suwałki
In a forest on the north-eastern edge of Suwałki lie stone burial mounds almost two thousand years old. The Yotvingian Cemetery Reserve protects a burial ground used from the 2nd to the 5th century AD, one of the best-known archaeological…
Nature
Susiec
The Sopot river, usually calm and sandy, suddenly picks up speed at Czartowe Pole. It cuts into the edge zone of the Roztocze hills, jumps over irregular, jagged rock steps and flows like a mountain stream. Above the gorge, among fir trees…
Nature
Czernice
Jezioro Czarne ("Black Lake") is slowly ceasing to be a lake. Its dark, acidic water is being overgrown from the shores, and carnivorous plants and rare mosses grow on the floating mat of the bog. This process is protected by one of the ol…
Nature
Kamińsko
The Jezioro Pławno Nature Reserve protects two small forest lakes in the western part of Puszcza Zielonka forest north-east of Poznań – Pławno and Kociołek – together with the bogs and patches of woodland around them. There is no beach and…
Nature
Rewa
Between Rewa and Mechelinki, right on the Bay of Puck, stretches a belt of wet meadows, reed beds and low dunes. This is the Mechelińskie Łąki reserve – more than 113 hectares protected since 2000 as a refuge for water and marsh birds. In…
Nature
Poznań
Between the housing blocks of Piątkowo and the new estates of Naramowice lies the small Piątkowo Wood, and inside it one of the smallest nature reserves in Poznań. Żurawiniec covers just 1.67 ha and protects a peat bog in a glacial trough.…
Nature
Łopuchówko
Nine-leaved toothwort is a plant of mountain beech forests, usually found in the Carpathians and the Sudetes. Yet in Zielonka Forest, a short drive from Poznań, it grows at its northernmost site in Poland – and the only documented one in t…
Nature
Tarnowskie Góry
Segiet Nature Reserve (say "SEH-gyet") is a beech-forest reserve on the border of Bytom and Tarnowskie Góry in Upper Silesia, about 20 km north of Katowice. It covers the top of Srebrna Góra, literally "Silver Hill" (347 m), where centurie…
Nature
Ciężkowice
Local legend says a town once stood in the forest above the Biała river, and its inhabitants were turned to stone for their wicked ways. Instead of houses there are now sandstone rocks shaped like mushrooms, towers and pulpits, up to 14 me…
Nature
Uchorowo
Śnieżycowy Jar (roughly "shnyeh-ZHY-tso-vy yar"), the Snowflake Ravine Nature Reserve, is a small wooded gully about 15 miles north of Poznań, in western Poland, where thousands of spring snowflakes bloom each March. It is one of the few l…
Nature
Olsztyn
Just outside Olsztyn near Częstochowa, in full view of the castle hill, runs a chain of limestone hills hiding the deepest cave of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. The Sokole Góry ("Falcon Hills") reserve protects beech woods, crags and more…
Landscape parks
Rogalin
Rogalin Landscape Park (Rogaliński Park Krajobrazowy; Rogalin is pronounced "ro-GAH-leen") protects a stretch of the Warta River valley about 12 miles south of Poznań, in western Poland. It is famous for one of Europe's largest groups of c…
Gardens
Zakopane
Rówień Krupowa is a large, flat meadow in the very centre of Zakopane, right next to the lower end of Krupówki street. From its lawns you can see Giewont and Gubałówka, and through the year it hosts the town's biggest outdoor events, from…
Viewpoints
Klucze
The Wind Rose (Róża Wiatrów) is a wooden viewing platform in Klucze whose arms run straight down onto the sand of the Błędów Desert. From the deck you look over open stretches of the largest area of drifting sand in Poland, and a few steps…
Landmarks
Łeba
In a pine wood on the western bank of the Łeba river stands a lone fragment of brick wall. It is all that remains above ground of a medieval town – Old Łeba, destroyed by storms and buried by sand. Słowiński National Park calls the ruins o…
Castles
Bochotnica
On a steep, wooded spur above the Bystra valley, about 70 metres above the valley floor, brick-and-stone walls with empty window openings emerge from the trees. Locals call them "Esterka's Castle" – although the legend of a royal mistress…
Old towns & squares
Kraków
Kraków's Main Market Square (Rynek Główny, say: RIH-nek GWOO-vnih) is the heart of the Old Town and one of the largest medieval town squares in Europe – roughly 200 by 200 meters, about 10 acres, laid out when Kraków received its town char…
Old towns & squares
Wieliczka
On Wieliczka's Upper Market Square the paving suddenly seems to open up and miners climb out of the crevice. This is "Salt World", a three-dimensional painting covering 350 m² and regarded as the largest work of its kind in Poland. The squ…
Old towns & squares
Międzylesie
The market square in Międzylesie is not square at all – it is an elongated triangle, with a Baroque column topped by the Virgin Mary rising from a small green in the middle. It was put up after a run of disasters struck the town at the end…
Old towns & squares
Kluczbork
The relief in the tympanum on the west wall of the town hall shows a square that no longer exists: the town hall surrounded by twelve small houses known as the "Twelve Apostles". A fire in 1925 destroyed eight of them; the two survivors st…
Old towns & squares
Lubomierz
Lubomierz escaped destruction in the Second World War, so its centre has kept the shape of a medieval market town. At its heart is plac Wolności (Freedom Square) – the old market place and main street in one, lined almost entirely with his…