Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Landmarks
Węgrów
The wavy, two-storey gable crowned with a star can be seen from the far end of St Mary's Market Square. The Gdańsk House, a Baroque inn from the mid-18th century, recalls the days when Węgrów lived off the grain trade and competed with nei…
Landmarks
Olsztyn
The small building on ul. Zyndrama z Maszkowic is the first completed work of Erich Mendelsohn – the Olsztyn-born architect later famous for the Einstein Tower in Potsdam. The former Jewish pre-burial house Bet Tahara (Hebrew for House of…
Landmarks
Pyzdry
On the market square in Pyzdry, among brick town houses, stands a wooden house with an arcaded porch resting on four posts. It was built in 1768 and is the oldest surviving residential building in this former royal town on the Warta. Today…
Landmarks
Supraśl
On ul. Konarskiego in Supraśl, right next to the monastery complex, stands a wooden, shingle-roofed house that locals know by three names: the Gardener's House (Dom Ogrodnika), the Old Post Office (Stara Poczta) and the Old Inn (Stara Karc…
Landmarks
Międzylesie
On Sobieskiego street stand two houses that seem to belong to another age: tall, steep roofs, board-clad gables facing the street and arcades on wooden posts. They are the last of seven weavers' houses known locally as the "Seven Brothers"…
Landmarks
Sulmierzyce
In the middle of the market square in Sulmierzyce stands a white, plastered building with a shingle roof and a turret whose weather vane bears the date 1743. Beneath the plaster are log walls: this is the only fully preserved wooden town h…
Landmarks
Gniezno
The Gniezno Doors are a pair of Romanesque bronze doors inside Gniezno Cathedral and one of the most important medieval artworks in Central Europe. Cast in the late 12th century, they tell the life and martyrdom of St. Adalbert in eighteen…
Landmarks
Gdańsk
Artus Court in Gdańsk is one of the grandest civic interiors in Poland: a Gothic hall where the city's wealthy merchants once met, feasted and did business. It stands on Long Market (Długi Targ), right behind the Neptune Fountain, in the h…
Landmarks
Toruń
On the site of today's Artus Court, the Second Peace of Toruń was sworn in 1466 – the treaty under which Gdańsk Pomerania, and with it access to the sea, returned to Poland. The present building at Rynek Staromiejski 6 is already the third…
Landmarks
Brenna
The Kossak Manor in Górki Wielkie (say "GOOR-kee VYEL-kyeh") is the partly rebuilt ruin of an 18th-century country house in southern Poland's Cieszyn Silesia region, where the Kossak family of artists and writers lived from 1922. Its best-…
Landmarks
Szczawnica
When the rebuilding of Dworek Gościnny in Szczawnica began in 2008, no plans of the building survived. The architects had an old postcard showing a man standing in front of the entrance – they assumed he was about 180 cm tall and used him…
Landmarks
Wrocław
The District of Four Denominations in Wrocław (also called the District of Mutual Respect) is a small corner of the Old Town where a synagogue, an Orthodox cathedral, a Roman Catholic church and a Lutheran church all stand within about 300…
Landmarks
Pobiedziska
On the market square of Pobiedziska, halfway between Poznań and Gniezno, three legendary brothers rest on a large boulder in the middle of a round basin. The Lech, Czech and Rus Fountain is a small monument with bronze figures — one standi…
Landmarks
Gdańsk
The Neptune Fountain (Fontanna Neptuna) in Gdańsk is the city's best-known landmark: a bronze statue of the Roman sea god, trident raised, standing on Long Market (Długi Targ) in front of the Artus Court since the 1630s. It sums up the sto…
Landmarks
Siewierz
"From Siewierz came a cart, carrying painted maidens" – almost everyone in Poland knows this song from the repertoire of the Śląsk Song and Dance Ensemble. In Siewierz you can actually see the maidens: two bronze figures of dancing girls i…
Landmarks
Nysa
The Romans inscribed S.P.Q.R. – "the Senate and People of Rome" – on their buildings. In 1701 the burghers of Nysa carved S.P.Q.N., "the Senate and People of Nysa", on their fountain, and there is hardly better proof that the town known as…
Landmarks
Katowice
Giszowiec (say "gee-SHOH-vyets") is a historic garden-city estate in Katowice, built in the early 1900s for coal miners and their families. Instead of tenement blocks, it has whitewashed cottages with steep red roofs, private gardens and t…
Landmarks
Sopot
The Grand Hotel in Sopot is the most famous hotel on the Polish Baltic coast – a grand domed building right on the beach, a few minutes' walk north of the Sopot pier. Opened in 1927 as a luxury hotel for casino guests, it has hosted royalt…
Landmarks
Kazimierz Dolny
The Przybyła Brothers' Townhouses in Kazimierz Dolny (roughly "kah-ZHEE-myesh DOL-nee") are two Renaissance merchant houses on the town's Market Square whose carved facades have become the symbol of this small Vistula River town in eastern…
Landmarks
Tarnów
The original gate of Tarnów's Jewish cemetery, through which thousands of Jews passed during the Holocaust, has been held since 1991 by the Holocaust Museum in the United States — a copy stands in its place. Behind it lies one of the oldes…
Landmarks
Żarki
On a sandy hill on Polna Street in Żarki, among pines and birches, stand more than 700 matzevot, traditional Jewish gravestones. This is one of the largest surviving Jewish cemeteries in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, the limestone Jura re…
Landmarks
Zawiercie
Behind a brick wall on Piaskowa street in Kromołów, now a district of Zawiercie, stand around 920 matzevot (Jewish headstones) – the oldest commemorates Sulka, daughter of Avraham Hirsh, who died on 21 August 1730. According to Poland's Na…
Landmarks
Wieluń
Hidden in a clump of old trees beside a stream stands a larch-wood church that is barely visible from national road 45. The Church of the Holy Name of Mary in Gaszyn, 3 km south of Wieluń, belongs to the Wieluń group of 16th-century wooden…
Landmarks
Gilowice
The wooden Church of St Andrew the Apostle in Gilowice has moved house: it was built in the neighbouring village of Rychwałd, and in the mid-18th century it was taken apart and reassembled in the next village. Inside you will find a stone…