Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Kazimierz Dolny
The Natural History Museum in Kazimierz Dolny occupies a striking late-16th-century granary on the Vistula, and it is one of the best things to do in Kazimierz Dolny with kids or on a rainy day. Inside, exhibits explain the river gorge, th…
Museums
Kazimierz Dolny
The Museum of Goldsmithing Art in Kazimierz Dolny is a branch of the Vistula Museum that describes itself as the only museum of its kind in Poland. Set in the historic cellars of the museum's main building on the Market Square, it displays…
Museums
Lublin
The Lublin Open-Air Village Museum (Muzeum Wsi Lubelskiej) is one of the largest open-air museums in Poland: around 27 hectares (67 acres) of wooden cottages, manor houses, windmills, an Eastern Catholic church and a reconstructed prewar s…
Gardens
Lublin
Lublin's thickest tree grows in the Saxon Garden: a white poplar in the southern part of the park measures more than 6 metres round and has been a protected natural monument since 1997. The city's oldest public park was laid out in 1837 in…
Zoos
Zamość
The Stefan Miler Zoo in Zamość (say "ZAH-moshch") is the only zoo in Poland's Lublin region and one of its most popular family attractions, with about 200,000 visitors a year. It sits just 1 km from the Renaissance market square of this UN…
Palaces
Radzyń Podlaski
The Potocki Palace in Radzyń Podlaski (say RAH-jin pod-LAH-skee) is one of the most beautiful Rococo residences in Poland: the work of the architect Jakub Fontana with sculpture by Jan Chryzostom Redler, set in a park with a canal and pond…
Palaces
Lubartów
At the northern edge of Lubartów, on the axis of the avenue leading towards Kozłówka, stands a Baroque palace that two of the greatest architects of the Polish Baroque worked on: Tylman van Gameren and Paweł Antoni Fontana. The façade is c…
Palaces
Zamość
Zamość began with this building: the palace of Chancellor and Grand Hetman Jan Zamoyski was the first structure raised after the town was founded. After centuries of rebuilding it now looks modest and awaits restoration, but together with…
Historic sites
Lublin
The State Museum at Majdanek in Lublin preserves the site of KL Lublin, a German Nazi concentration and extermination camp that operated from 1941 to 1944. Founded in the fall of 1944, it is the oldest museum in the world commemorating the…
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…
Museums
Lublin
On the vaulted ceiling of a cellar beneath the red house at Rynek 8 in Lublin stands a naked Fortune on a globe, holding a cloth whipped by the wind. Around her play out scenes about marriage, folly and love, copied from a fashionable Germ…
Caves
Chełm
The Chełm Chalk Tunnels (say HWEM, with a soft h) are a maze of passages cut into chalk beneath the Old Town of Chełm in eastern Poland, billed as unique in Europe. Locals mined chalk here for centuries, and part of the old workings is now…
Monuments & mounds
Szczebrzeszyn
"W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" ("In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds") – this line from a poem by Jan Brzechwa is known to every Polish child and every foreigner who has tried to master Polish pronunciation; it is…
Monuments & mounds
Susiec
Kargul and Pawlak, the heroes of the cult Polish comedy "Sami swoi" ("All Friends Here"), stand in Susiec for a reason. This is where Sylwester Chęciński, director of the comedy trilogy about two feuding neighbours from beyond the Bug rive…
Other
Kazimierz Dolny
There is no bridge between Kazimierz Dolny and Janowiec, although the two are less than 5 km apart across the Vistula. Since 8 June 1996 a ferry has bridged the gap: a few minutes on deck replaced a detour of about 34 km via Puławy, with v…
Viewpoints
Kazimierz Dolny
From a grassy hill above Kazimierz Dolny you look out over a wide bend of the Vistula, the thatched roofs of Mięćmierz and, across the river, the village of Janowiec. Albrechtówka, once called Kamienna Góra (Stone Hill), combines one of th…
Landmarks
Zamość
Zamość Town Hall is the defining landmark of Zamość (say "ZAH-moshch"), the Renaissance planned town in southeastern Poland. Set into the north side of the Great Market Square, it rises to a 52-meter (170 ft) clock tower and is fronted by…
Other
Kazimierz Dolny
From the deck of a boat Kazimierz Dolny looks quite different than from the market square: you see the high green slopes of the Lesser Poland Vistula Gorge, old quarries and the village of Mięćmierz right by the river. One-hour cruises lea…
Nature
Susiec
The Sopot river, usually calm and sandy, suddenly picks up speed at Czartowe Pole. It cuts into the edge zone of the Roztocze hills, jumps over irregular, jagged rock steps and flows like a mountain stream. Above the gorge, among fir trees…
Historic sites
Zamość
The Zamość Rotunda is a circular 19th-century gun battery that became a German Gestapo prison and execution site during World War II. Today it is the Mausoleum of the Martyrdom of the Zamość Region, a memorial museum surrounded by a vast c…
Castles
Bochotnica
On a steep, wooded spur above the Bystra valley, about 70 metres above the valley floor, brick-and-stone walls with empty window openings emerge from the trees. Locals call them "Esterka's Castle" – although the legend of a royal mistress…
Old towns & squares
Kazimierz Dolny
The Market Square in Kazimierz Dolny is the heart of one of Poland's prettiest small towns: an irregular, cobbled square with a wooden-roofed well in the middle, ornate Renaissance townhouses with arcades, and a parish church looking down…
Old towns & squares
Lublin
Lublin's Old Town Market Square (Rynek) is the heart of one of the best-preserved historic centers in eastern Poland. Colorful merchant houses frame an irregular square, and in the middle stands the elegant Neoclassical Crown Tribunal, the…
Old towns & squares
Zamość
The Great Market Square in Zamość (pronounced roughly "ZAH-moshch") is the centerpiece of a Renaissance "ideal city" in eastern Poland and one of the most harmonious public squares in Central Europe. Laid out in the late 16th century as a…