Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Palaces
Jankowice
Jankowice Palace, about 20 km west of central Poznań, began life as a strikingly modern villa built for a Swedish diplomat. Today it is a municipal cultural centre with an 18.5-hectare park that is open around the clock. Between the palace…
Gardens
Poznań
In the Sołacz district, between Wielkopolska Avenue and the Bogdanka valley, lies a park best known for its avenue of silver maples. Adam Wodziczko Park covers more than 7 hectares and has over 2,000 trees of 54 species, and its patron was…
Landscape parks
Turew
This park protects not a forest or a mountain but farmland, or more precisely a network of tree belts between the fields. General Dezydery Chłapowski began planting them almost 200 years ago. The result, between Kościan and Śrem, is an agr…
Landscape parks
Pobiedziska
Promno Landscape Park (Park Krajobrazowy Promno; say "PROM-no") is a pocket of lakes, oak and pine woods and glacial hills just east of Poznań, the capital of the Greater Poland region. At around 13 square miles it is small, yet it holds f…
Landscape parks
Murowana Goślina
Puszcza Zielonka Landscape Park (say "POOSH-chah zhyeh-LON-kah") is a large protected forest just northeast of Poznań, one of the biggest cities in western Poland. It covers more than 12,000 hectares of woodland, glacial lakes and quiet fo…
Gardens
Kalisz
The City Park in Kalisz (pronounced roughly "KAH-leesh") is a leafy riverside park in central Poland whose history goes back to 1798, making it one of the oldest public parks in the country. In the 19th century it was considered Poland's m…
Gardens
Piła
As late as the mid-1970s, the island between two arms of the Gwda river was a marsh that locals called Gardolina. Today it's the Island Park, about 10 hectares of greenery in the very centre of Piła that the town itself calls "the heart of…
Landscape parks
Poznań
Every day at noon a narrow-gauge steam locomotive in Rataje Park puffs out clouds of smoke and sounds its whistle – though it never leaves. It is the party piece of the Środa County Railway open-air museum, set in the heart of Poznań's sec…
Landscape parks
Poznań
In the 1950s a parachute tower more than 30 m high loomed over the Sołacz ponds – and until 1956 the park was even named after Stalin. It is hard to picture today: Sołacz Park is a calm, English-style landscape park in the Bogdanka valley,…
Nature
Poznań
Where clay was dug for almost a century to make bricks for a growing Poznań, reeds now reflect in still water and terns circle above the ponds. Szachty – or simply Glinianki, "the clay pits" – are around 40 ponds in the Junikowo Stream val…
Landscape parks
Poznań
A park in Poznań's Łazarz district once had a statue of a US president sculpted by Gutzon Borglum – the same artist who carved the presidents' faces into Mount Rushmore. The Germans destroyed the statue, but Wilson Park still tells an inte…
Lakes
Gołuchów
The sandy beach at ul. Leśna 1 is the lifeguarded bathing area of the Gołuchów Tourism and Sports Centre (GOTiS) on the reservoir formed by the Trzemna river. The water has an excellent record: in four consecutive official classifications…
Nature
Gołuchów
In the woods next to the Gołuchów arboretum live European bison, Polish konik horses, fallow deer and wild boar – on more than 20 ha of fenced land, part of which is a meadow used as bison pasture. The Animal Display Enclosure has been her…
Historic sites
Imiołki
For most of the year the Lednica Fields are quiet meadows above Lake Lednica, with a white steel fish on the hill. Once a year, on the first Saturday of June, up to 100,000 young people gather here for the Lednica 2000 Youth Meeting – one…
Monuments & mounds
Gniezno
The Monument to Bolesław the Brave stands on Lech Hill, on the square in front of Gniezno Cathedral and opposite the Primate's Palace. The bronze figure of Poland's first crowned ruler, wearing a crown and resting on a sword, is 4.75 m tal…
Monuments & mounds
Jarocin
A boot more than two metres tall, with a high leg, stands by one of Jarocin's busier junctions and tells you at once where you are. The "glan" – the heavy leather boot worn by the punks who flocked to Jarocin's concerts – became the symbol…
Monuments & mounds
Poznań
The Poznań June 1956 Monument, known locally as the Poznań Crosses (Poznańskie Krzyże), stands on Adam Mickiewicz Square in the city's Imperial District, next to the Imperial Castle. Two joined steel crosses, 19.5 m and 21 m tall and bound…
Monuments & mounds
Czerniejewo
By the old forest road known as the Leśniewo Track stands a white obelisk with a cross, and its base records the exact time of death: 12 noon, 30 December 1912. This is where Count Witold Skórzewski was killed in a hunting accident – a dip…
Other
Kórnik
The Kórnik Promenade (Kórnik is pronounced roughly "KOOR-neek") is a lakeside walking and cycling path along Lake Kórnik, a small town about 20 km southeast of Poznań in western Poland. Named after the Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szym…
Viewpoints
Żerków
For years, visitors who came to the hill above Brzóstków in summer mostly saw maize. In 2019 the Żerków municipality, together with the State Forests, built a viewing platform here, restoring the view over the Warta glacial valley and the…
Landmarks
Leszno
Leszno Town Hall (Leszno is pronounced roughly "LESH-no") stands in the middle of the market square of this small city in western Poland. With its tall clock tower and pale classical façades, it is the town's best-known landmark – a buildi…
Landmarks
Poznań
Poznań Town Hall (Ratusz, say "RAH-toosh") on the Old Market Square is one of the finest Renaissance town halls in Central Europe and the symbol of the city. Every day at noon two mechanical billy goats pop out above the clock and butt hea…
Nature
Czernice
Jezioro Czarne ("Black Lake") is slowly ceasing to be a lake. Its dark, acidic water is being overgrown from the shores, and carnivorous plants and rare mosses grow on the floating mat of the bog. This process is protected by one of the ol…
Nature
Kamińsko
The Jezioro Pławno Nature Reserve protects two small forest lakes in the western part of Puszcza Zielonka forest north-east of Poznań – Pławno and Kociołek – together with the bogs and patches of woodland around them. There is no beach and…