Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Tum
The Collegiate Church in Tum (say "toom") – the Archcollegiate Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Alexius near Łęczyca – is one of Poland's finest Romanesque buildings. With two apses, four towers and thick stone walls, it rises from the fi…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Chełmża
King John III Sobieski brought back the saddle cloth of Kara Mustafa's horse from the Battle of Vienna and gave it to this church, where, turned into a liturgical cope, it survives to this day. The Co-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Chełm…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Henryków
"Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai" — "let me grind now, and you take a rest" — is what, according to the chronicle, the settler Boguchwał said to his wife as she worked the hand quern. Entered around 1270 in the Latin Book of Henryków, thi…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Hajnówka
A roof of irregular, interlocking concrete shells makes it look more like a sculpture than a traditional Orthodox church. The Holy Trinity Cathedral in Hajnówka holds about 5,000 worshippers, one of the largest Orthodox churches in Poland,…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Wadowice
On the south wall of the basilica is a sundial with the motto "Czas ucieka, wieczność czeka" — "Time flies, eternity awaits". According to the parish, it can be seen from the windows of the Wojtyła family's former flat. The Basilica of the…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Opatów
Forty-one figures weep at the news of the chancellor's death: King Sigismund the Old, a grand hetman, a bishop, courtiers, musicians — even greyhounds and falcons. This is the Opatów Lament, a Renaissance bronze relief and one of the fines…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Żywiec
According to the 18th-century chronicler Andrzej Komoniecki, the Renaissance tower of Żywiec's parish church was taller than the towers of St Mary's Basilica in Kraków. Today it stands 60 metres high, and since 2019 visitors can climb to i…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Prudnik
In 1735 Prudnik's new church was almost finished — the Blessed Sacrament was already kept there — when a fire in the town destroyed it along with the freshly painted frescoes by Felix Anton Scheffler. The builder Johann Innozenz Töpper reb…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Łódź
The domed church with four corner turrets on the corner of Plac Wolności (Liberty Square) and Piotrkowska Street was for more than half a century the church of Łódź's Lutherans — Holy Trinity Church. Since 1945 it has served Catholics as t…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Pińczów
The Old Synagogue in Pińczów is a stone synagogue built in 1594–1609, one of the oldest surviving Jewish houses of prayer in Poland and the only well-preserved trace of the once large Jewish community of the Ponidzie region. It stands on K…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Szydłów
From the outside it looks like a small fortress: stone walls about 2 metres thick, heavy buttresses and an attic parapet resembling battlements. Szydłów Synagogue, built in the 16th century within the town walls, is the oldest surviving sy…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Bochnia
The wall paintings in St Kinga's Chapel were designed by Jan Matejko, Poland's great history painter, and the rebuilding of the church after the fire of 1655 was funded by King John Casimir in this salt-mining town. The Basilica of St Nich…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Piekary Śląskie
In 1680 Emperor Leopold I asked for the image of Our Lady of Piekary to be brought to plague-stricken Prague, where it was carried in procession through the streets. Three years later King John III Sobieski prayed before it on his way to t…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Stargard
Locals often call it the cathedral, although it has always been a parish church. The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Queen of the World, in Stargard is one of the most important Gothic churches on the Baltic: it is 77.5 m long, its nave is m…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Brzeg
The nave here rises 30 metres, one of the tallest in Silesia, and St Nicholas' is counted among the largest Gothic churches in the region. It was the burghers' parish church of Brzeg, served Lutherans for four centuries, burned out in 1945…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Strzelno
A round nave of granite blocks, a square chancel and a horseshoe-shaped tower: St Procopius Rotunda in Strzelno is the largest Romanesque church in Poland built on a circular plan. It survived being turned into a convent gatehouse, desecra…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Ludźmierz
During the coronation in 1963, the sceptre slipped from the hand of the statue of the Virgin Mary and was caught by a young bishop, Karol Wojtyła. Years later many saw this as a sign of his election as pope. Ludźmierz, the oldest parish in…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Krzeszów
The Basilica of the Assumption in Krzeszów (say "KSHEH-shoof") is the centerpiece of a former Cistercian abbey often called the "European Pearl of the Baroque." Hidden in a small village in the foothills of the Sudetes in Lower Silesia, it…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Nowy Sącz
At the base of the north tower is a door on which four town trumpeters signed their names in 1617 – today the inscription is known mainly from a drawing by the painter Stanisław Wyspiański. The Basilica of St Margaret in Nowy Sącz is the t…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Strzelno
For more than two hundred years nobody knew that the Baroque pillars of the basilica in Strzelno concealed Romanesque columns covered in carvings. They were discovered only in 1946 by Professor Zdzisław Kępiński — and turned out to be one…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Węgrów
The sacristy of the basilica in Węgrów holds a mirror that, according to legend, belonged to Master Twardowski, the Polish Faust, and in 1969 Lech Wałęsa was married at its altar. These stories alone would justify a stop on the way to Podl…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Drohiczyn
In the 18th century the regional assemblies of the Podlasie nobility met beneath these vaults; during the Second World War the church was turned into a stable, and later into a shooting range. Today the Baroque Jesuit church above the Bug…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Radom
The two 72-metre towers of Radom Cathedral deliberately echo the taller tower of St Mary's Basilica in Kraków, and Józef Pius Dziekoński's whole design is a "younger sibling" of his St Michael and St Florian Cathedral in Warsaw's Praga dis…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Szczyrzyc
The Cistercians of Szczyrzyc have been praying, farming and – with interruptions – brewing beer for nearly eight centuries. Szczyrzyc Abbey is the only monastery of the order on Polish soil that has operated without a break since the Middl…