Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Biskupin
The Archaeological Museum in Biskupin (say "bis-KOO-peen") is Poland's most famous archaeological open-air museum: a life-size reconstruction of a fortified lakeside settlement built around 2,700 years ago, alongside an early medieval vill…
Museums
Bóbrka
The Ignacy Łukasiewicz Museum of the Oil and Gas Industry in Bóbrka (pronounced roughly "BOOB-rka") sits on the grounds of an oil field founded in 1854 – the oldest oil mine in the world that is still in operation. In a forest near Krosno…
Museums
Busko-Zdrój
The green wooden villa at the entrance to Busko's old town looks like a typical spa guest house from a century ago. Few spa visitors know that during the German occupation it housed a Nazi Special Court, and in the cellar a jail where up t…
Museums
Kalisz
The Dorotka Tower is the only surviving tower of Kalisz's medieval walls – out of eighteen that once reinforced them. Since 8 December 2018 it has housed the Centre of Kalisz Fairy Tales, Legends and the Town's Founding: a multimedia exhib…
Museums
Szczecin
The Dialogue Centre Przełomy (roughly "psheh-WOH-mih", meaning "Breakthroughs") is an underground branch of the National Museum in Szczecin, hidden beneath Solidarity Square. It tells the story of postwar Szczecin – from the moment German…
Museums
Podlesice
The Jura Natural and Cultural Heritage Center in Podlesice (pronounced roughly "pod-leh-SHEE-tseh") is a small visitor center at the foot of Góra Zborów, one of the most striking limestone hills of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland – the "Poli…
Museums
Wrocław
In August 1980, about 20,000 people gathered outside the gate of this depot while bus drivers went on strike inside. Today the same red-brick hall on ul. Grabiszyńska houses the Depot History Centre (Centrum Historii Zajezdnia), a museum t…
Museums
Białystok
"I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people are brothers," Ludwik Zamenhof wrote years later – while recalling that on the streets of Białystok he saw at every step a division into Poles, Russians, Germans and Jews. The…
Museums
Gdynia
The Experyment Science Center in Gdynia (pronounced roughly "ex-PEH-ri-ment") is a hands-on science museum in the Pomeranian Science and Technology Park in the Redłowo district – a place where you don't just look at exhibits but touch, tes…
Museums
Orońsko
On the former estate of the painter Józef Brandt, in a park dotted with more than 100 sculptures, artists from around the world have been working since 1965. The Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko is a landscape park, contemporary art g…
Museums
Elbląg
Galeria EL Art Center in Elbląg (Centrum Sztuki Galeria EL; say "EL-blonk") is a contemporary art gallery set inside a Gothic former Dominican church, one of the oldest buildings in this northern Polish city. Bare brick walls, historic epi…
Museums
Poznań
The Enigma Cipher Center (Centrum Szyfrów Enigma) in Poznań is an interactive exhibition about one of the great intelligence stories of World War II: how three young Polish mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki…
Museums
Oświęcim
The Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim (osh-VYEN-cheem), with the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue, tells the story of the town before 1940 – the town its Jewish residents called Oshpitzin. The center brings together the Jewish Museum, t…
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…
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…
Museums
Gdynia
Dar Pomorza (roughly "dar po-MO-zha," meaning "Gift of Pomerania") is a three-masted full-rigged sailing ship moored at the South Pier in Gdynia, next to Kościuszko Square. Known in Poland as the "White Frigate," she trained generations of…
Museums
Mosina
On the shore of Lake Góreckie stands a white palace that now serves nature, though it was built for one of the worst criminals of occupied Greater Poland. Arthur Greiser, the Reich Governor of the Wartheland, built his residence here durin…
Museums
Szklarska Poręba
The Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann House in Szklarska Poręba (SHKLAR-ska po-REM-ba) is a museum in the former home of two German writers, the Hauptmann brothers. Around 1900 it was the heart of an artists' colony in what was then Schreiberhau.…
Museums
Jelenia Góra
The Gerhart Hauptmann House in Jagniątków (say "yag-NYON-tkoof") is a museum in Villa Wiesenstein, the home of the German playwright and 1912 Nobel Prize winner from 1901 until his death in 1946. Jagniątków, formerly Agnetendorf, is now a…
Museums
Kazimierz Dolny
The Kuncewicz House in Kazimierz Dolny (say "kah-ZHEE-myesh DOL-ni") is the 1930s timber-and-stone villa where Polish novelist Maria Kuncewiczowa lived and wrote, now a literary museum with its original interiors intact. Known locally as t…
Museums
Zalipie
In Zalipie flowers bloom all year round – on cottage walls, stoves, wells, fences and even dog kennels. This small village in the Vistula lowlands is famous for its painted houses, and the best place to start is the Felicja Curyłowa Painte…
Museums
Toruń
The Nicolaus Copernicus House in Toruń (say "TOR-oon-y") is a museum set inside two late-Gothic merchant houses on Kopernika Street, a short walk from the Old Town Market Square. Local tradition links the address with the birth of the astr…
Museums
Gdańsk
Uphagen House in Gdańsk is a small museum of burgher interiors at 12 Long Street (ulica Długa), and the only place on the Royal Route where you can walk through a furnished 18th-century merchant's home. Instead of display cases you get a s…