Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Kwiatoń
St. Paraskeva's Church in Kwiatoń (say "KFYAH-tone") is a former Lemko Greek Catholic tserkva – a wooden church of the Eastern rite – in the Low Beskids of southern Poland. Experts regard it as the model example, and arguably the most beau…
Churches & monasteries
Radruż
St. Paraskeva's Church in Radruż (say "RAH-droosh") is one of the oldest and best-preserved wooden tserkvas – Eastern-rite churches – in Poland: a late-Gothic timber church from the end of the 16th century on an oval hill in the Eastern Ro…
Churches & monasteries
Siemiatycze
On a rise above the Muchawiec stream, behind a stone wall with an ornate gate, stands a church with seven domes. This is the oldest Orthodox parish in Siemiatycze, dating back to the 15th century, while the present brick church was built i…
Churches & monasteries
Bystre
Three metal-clad domes with false lanterns rise above a Bieszczady meadow, well away from the main roads. The church of St Michael the Archangel in Bystre, in the Czarna district of the Bieszczady Mountains, was built in 1901–1902 and fell…
Churches & monasteries
Sanok
In Dobra (formerly Dobra Szlachecka) on the San River, in the Sanok municipality, a walled complex of two sacred buildings survives: a wooden tserkva from 1879 and an older gate tserkva in a tower. Poland's National Heritage Board describe…
Churches & monasteries
Komańcza
On the evening of 13 September 2006 one of the most remarkable wooden churches of the Carpathians burnt down in Komańcza, together with its iconostasis of 1832. Only the bell tower survived. The next day the Orthodox Archbishop of Przemyśl…
Churches & monasteries
Muszyna
The wooden church in Złockie does not look like a typical Lemko church. Instead of three towers in a row, it has a cross-shaped plan and a tall octagonal drum with a dome – a pattern foreign to the Lemko region but popular in Russia and th…
Churches & monasteries
Krynica-Zdrój
On the road from Grybów to Krynica-Zdrój, in the valley of the Mostysza stream, stands a church darkened by its shingles and crowned with three silvery onion domes. This is the former Greek Catholic church of St Michael the Archangel in Po…
Churches & monasteries
Puchły
The Orthodox Church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Puchły (say "POOH-hwih") is one of the most photogenic wooden churches in Poland. Painted a vivid blue and topped with a cluster of onion domes, it stands in a tiny village in t…
Churches & monasteries
Komańcza
In the valley of the Rzepedka stream, a tributary of the Osława, stands the wooden Greek Catholic Church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker from 1824 – a typical Eastern Lemko church with three onion domes and a free-standing bell tower. It s…
Churches & monasteries
Komańcza
The wooden Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God in Szczawne stands on a small rise above the Osława valley, by the road to Komańcza. Built in 1888–1889 as a Greek Catholic church, it now serves the Orthodox faithful. It h…
Churches & monasteries
Trześcianka
The green wooden Orthodox church of St Michael the Archangel, with a bulbous dome above the entrance and an onion-domed turret over the nave, is the best-known building in Trześcianka, one of the three villages on the Land of Open Shutters…
Churches & monasteries
Juchnowiec Kościelny
The small Orthodox Chapel of St Michael the Archangel in Wojszki has a surprising pedigree: it was funded in 1865 by the Governor-General of Vilnius, Mikhail Muravyov, nicknamed "the Hangman" for his brutal repression after the January Upr…
Churches & monasteries
Kleszczele
This white Orthodox church with blue onion domes in the centre of Kleszczele stands on the site of a former Catholic church and was partly built from its timber. The Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God was consecrated in 1877, and…
Churches & monasteries
Szczebrzeszyn
The white Orthodox church on ul. Sądowa looks modest, but it is the oldest sacred building owned by the Polish Orthodox Church. Its walls date from the 16th century and stand on the foundations of an even older church, and its history conn…
Churches & monasteries
Turzańsk
These wooden churches, known in Polish as cerkwie, are what remains of the Lemko and Boyko villages that filled the Osława and San valleys before the Second World War. The Lemkos and Boykos are Ruthenian highland communities of the Carpath…
Museums
Rabsztyn
This whitewashed wooden cottage from 1862 is where Antoni Kocjan was born – the designer whose gliders made up half of all those built in Poland in the 1930s, and during the war a key figure in uncovering Germany's V-2 rockets. The house w…
Museums
Koniaków
Inside a wooden house in the Szańce part of Koniaków, the highest village in the Silesian Voivodeship, hangs a trombita more than 11 metres long. According to the regional tourism portal it is probably the longest instrument of its kind in…
Mountains & peaks
Smerek
Chatka Puchatka ("KHAHT-kah poo-KHAHT-kah", Polish for Pooh's Hut, named after The House at Pooh Corner) is the highest tourist building in the Bieszczady Mountains of southeastern Poland. Perched at about 1,228 m on the open grassland rid…
Mountains & peaks
Szczawno-Zdrój
Chełmiec made it onto the Crown of Polish Mountains list thanks to a mistake: the survey point was once placed on top of the observation tower, so the mountain "grew" to 869 m. Modern surveys give 850 m above sea level, and the title of hi…
Museums
Brenna
Chlebowa Chata (the Bread Cottage) in Górki Małe is an open-air museum, museum and educational farm in one, set at the foot of the Silesian Beskids in the Brennica valley. Since 2005 the hosts have been showing what village life looked lik…
Thermal baths & water parks
Chochołów
Chochołowskie Termy (roughly "ho-ho-WOV-skyeh TER-mi") in the village of Chochołów is the largest thermal pool complex in Poland's Podhale region, the highland area at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. It offers about 4,500 m² (48,000 sq ft…
Other
Jerzmanowice
Chochołowy Dwór is a hotel and restaurant in Jerzmanowice, on national road 94 between Kraków and Olkusz, about 15 km from Kraków. The building and its interiors are styled on the manor houses of the local gentry. Ojców National Park and t…
Nature
Szklarska Poręba
On top of a granite rock group in the forest above Szklarska Poręba lies a boulder about 4 metres across that rests on just two points. That is why it can be gently set rocking – hence the name Chybotek, roughly "the wobbler". The rock has…