Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Nature
Złotoryja
About 15.5 million years ago a volcano was active on the edge of today's Złotoryja. The cone is long gone, but its vent remains, and quarry walls have sliced through it like a knife. As a result, Wilcza Góra, also called Wilkołak, offers a…
Silesian
Wisła
The Vistula Cycle Route (Wiślana Trasa Rowerowa) is meant to link the Beskid Mountains with the Baltic: it starts at Wisła Uzdrowisko railway station and is ultimately to end on Sobieszewo Island in Gdańsk. The planned length is around 1,2…
Monuments & mounds
Wrocław
Wrocław is home to about 1,040 bronze dwarfs: by cash machines, on window sills, under street lamps and at office doors. The thousandth figure was unveiled in September 2025 – and this whole little population has a surprisingly serious ori…
Other
Świnoujście
Wybrzeże Władysława IV (Władysław IV Waterfront) is a quayside street and promenade along the Świna river in central Świnoujście, on the island of Usedom (Uznam) – the place where it is clearest that this is first and foremost a port town.…
Nature
Miasteczko Śląskie
In the woods near Żyglin, a district of Miasteczko Śląskie, a small scrap of an old dune has survived – a flattened patch measuring about 20 by 40 metres. The rest of the sand was dug out in the 20th century for the coal-mining industry, a…
Nature
Dźwirzyno
West of Kołobrzeg, between Dźwirzyno and Grzybowo, the beach shows a textbook cross-section of the Baltic coast in a small space: pale, shifting white dunes, then lower grey dunes covered in grassland, and beyond them pine forest on the du…
Nature
Opole
North of Opole, in the forests along the Stobrawa and Oder rivers, lie dunes you would hardly expect here: sandy hills up to 20 metres high, covered in pine forest. They are one of the most striking landscapes of the Stobrawa Landscape Par…
Landmarks
Olsztyn
The High Gate in Olsztyn (Polish: Wysoka Brama, "VIH-so-kah BRAH-mah"), historically called the Upper Gate, is a 14th-century Gothic town gate and the classic entrance to the Old Town of this lakeside city in northeastern Poland. It is the…
Gardens
Opole
As late as the 1930s, Bolko Island could only be reached by boat. Today bridges lead onto it, and the island, surrounded by the Oder and the Flood Relief Canal, is Opole's green lung: a town park with ponds, old oaks and a zoo. Locals come…
Other
Bydgoszcz
Mill Island (Wyspa Młyńska, roughly "VIS-pah MWIN-skah") is a leafy river island in the heart of Bydgoszcz, Poland, wedged between the Brda River and a narrow side channel called the Młynówka. On just 6.5 hectares (16 acres) you'll find 19…
Landmarks
Wrocław
Piasek Island in Wrocław (say "PYAH-sek," meaning "sand") is a small island in the Oder River between the Old Town and Cathedral Island, and it lies on the city's most scenic walking route. It's dominated by the Gothic Church of the Virgin…
Other
Wrocław
Słodowa Island is a small, green island in the Oder right next to the Old Town, where students sit on the grass on warm evenings and the riverside offers a view of the Baroque main building of the University of Wrocław. It looks like a pla…
Coast
Gdańsk
Sobieszewo Island was created in a single night and given its final shape by workers with shovels and barges of stone. Gdańsk's largest and easternmost district is a strip of coastal forest and dunes between two mouths of the Vistula, with…
Landmarks
Gdańsk
Granary Island in Gdańsk (Wyspa Spichrzów, roughly "VIS-pah SPEEKH-zhoov") sits between the Motława River and its man-made channel, the New Motława, directly across from the Main Town waterfront. For centuries it held hundreds of grain war…
Historic sites
Gniezno
Lech Hill in Gniezno (Wzgórze Lecha) is where Poland, quite literally, began. This low rise above a lake in west-central Poland held the stronghold of the early Piast dukes, the seat of the country's first archbishop and the cathedral wher…
Landmarks
Płock
Cathedral Hill in Płock (Wzgórze Tumskie; say "PWOTSK") is the historic heart of one of Poland's oldest cities, perched on a high bank above the Vistula River about 120 km northwest of Warsaw. Here a Romanesque-Renaissance cathedral holdin…
Landmarks
Opole
University Hill, known to locals as the Górka ("the little hill"), is the highest point of Opole's old town – 165 m above sea level, a few steps from the market square. In the Middle Ages lime was burned here; for five centuries it was hom…
Nature
Bytom
Between the housing estates of Bytom, Chorzów and Piekary Śląskie lies a patchwork of ponds and reed beds that hosts an unusually large population of the little bittern, Poland's smallest heron. Żabie Doły ("Frog Hollows") grew out of subs…
Viewpoints
Szklarska Poręba
On regional road 358 between Szklarska Poręba and Świeradów-Zdrój, the road at 775 m above sea level doubles back almost 180 degrees over about 440 m. Death Bend has an ominous name, but today people come here mainly for the view: from bel…
Lakes
Byczyna
The Biskupice-Brzózki reservoir was not built for sunbathers but to save the groundwater — west of Byczyna its level had dropped markedly. Built in 1995–1996 on the Pratwa river, the reservoir covers 42 ha, and on an island surrounded by a…
Lakes
Czarna Białostocka
The Czapielówka reservoir lies in a forest clearing right next to Czarna Białostocka, and it was created almost entirely by community effort: for nearly 10 years local residents, foresters and soldiers worked on it together. Today it serve…
Lakes
gmina Pilica
A few steps from the market square in Pilica, right by the springs of the river of the same name, lies a small reservoir whose shore offers a view of the town's church towers. In summer it has a bathing area with marked swimming zones and…
Lakes
Poraj
Poraj Reservoir was built not for holidaymakers but for steelworkers: its job was to store industrial water for the Częstochowa steelworks. Yet the planners allowed for recreation from the start, and recreation won. According to Poraj muni…
Lakes
Rybnik
Rybnik Reservoir (Zalew Rybnicki), which locals call the "Rybnik Sea", is a dammed lake on the Ruda river in the northern part of Rybnik, built for the Rybnik power station. For half a century it was famous for its warm water, which did no…