Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Gardens
Tarnowskie Góry
Repty Park (Park w Reptach, roughly "REP-tih") in Tarnowskie Góry is a 19th-century landscape park of about 200 hectares (500 acres), laid out by the aristocratic Henckel von Donnersmarck family on the site of a former deer park. Old beech…
Gardens
Sosnowiec
On the banks of the Czarna Przemsza river, a few hundred metres from central Sosnowiec, stands the oldest building in the city: Sielecki Castle, whose origins go back to the 15th century. Around it spreads Sielecki Park, more than 20 hecta…
Gardens
Warszawa
Skaryszewski Park (Park Skaryszewski im. Ignacego Jana Paderewskiego) is Warsaw's largest and one of its most beautiful city parks, laid out in the English landscape style in the Praga-Południe district. It covers 58 ha, with ponds and cha…
Gardens
Chorzów
Where trees grow today, in 1950 there were spoil heaps, illegal mine shafts and marshland. Silesian Park (Park Śląski) in Chorzów – until 2012 called the Jerzy Ziętek Provincial Park of Culture and Recreation – covers 535 hectares and is o…
Gardens
Polanica-Zdrój
In Polanica-Zdrój chess is more than a game on a park bench. Since 1963 the spa town has hosted the Akiba Rubinstein Memorial, a tournament that has attracted world champions, and the Spa Park has a corner dedicated to the royal game. The…
Gardens
Wrocław
Szczytnicki Park (roughly "shchit-NEE-tskee") is Wrocław's grand green lung: about 250 acres (100 ha) of old trees, ponds and lawns right next to the UNESCO-listed Centennial Hall. Laid out in 1783, it was one of the first English-style la…
Gardens
Pokój
The historic park in Pokój (pronounced "POH-kooy", meaning "peace") is a former ducal palace garden in the Opole region of southern Poland and one of the most remarkable landscape gardens in Silesia. It is all that remains of Carlsruhe, th…
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…
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
Częstochowa
The sundial beside the former observatory in Staszic Park was carved from a block of black granite that once formed the base of a monument to Tsar Alexander II, which stood in front of the Jasna Góra monastery from 1889 to 1917. It is one…
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…
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…
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…