Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Viewpoints
Krynica-Zdrój
Góra Parkowa (742 m) rises right above the promenade of Krynica-Zdrój, and since 1937 Poland's first funicular railway has run to its summit. Remarkably, it still uses the same original interwar cars. At the top you will find the spa park,…
Viewpoints
Kudowa-Zdrój
Above the Spa Park in Kudowa-Zdrój rises a wooded ridge whose southern paths were already used by spa guests in the 18th century. Park Hill (Góra Parkowa, German Schlossberg, 477 m) hides the wooden Love Gazebo, a viewpoint over the town a…
Historic sites
Pilica
Before the town was moved to a more convenient site in the 14th century, Pilica stood right here, on a small hill above the river now called St Peter's Hill and known as the cradle of Pilica. Some 800 years ago this was the site of the fir…
Viewpoints
Nowa Ruda
St Anne's Hill rises within the town limits of Nowa Ruda, and on its summit stands a stone lookout tower from 1911, one of the first modernist towers in the Sudetes. A short way below is a Baroque pilgrimage church with a hermit's house an…
Viewpoints
Kazimierz Dolny
Three Crosses Hill in Kazimierz Dolny (Góra Trzech Krzyży, roughly "GOO-rah TSHEH-h KSHI-zhih") rises about 50 m above the Market Square and offers the town's most famous view: red roofs, the parish church, the castle ruins and the broad V…
Viewpoints
Parchatka
There are two Hills of Three Crosses on the Vistula near Puławy. The one in Kazimierz Dolny rises right above the market square in the middle of town; the one in Parchatka offers only a wooded climb up a loess gully and a view over the eas…
Viewpoints
Nowa Ruda
The round red-sandstone tower on All Saints' Hill carries a relief of a Prussian field marshal above its door, a reminder of the Moltke family, who helped pay for it in 1913. From its gallery, about 15 metres up, you can even see Śnieżka i…
Castles
Grudziądz
On a hill rising some 60 m above the Vistula once stood one of the mightiest Teutonic castles in the Chełmno Land. The Prussians took it apart for its bricks, German soldiers blew up the last surviving tower in 1945 – and the people of Gru…
Castles
Cieszyn
Castle Hill (Góra Zamkowa) is where Cieszyn began. On a steep rise above the Olza River, right on the Czech border, stand the Romanesque Rotunda of St Nicholas and St Wenceslas – the oldest masonry building in Silesia and the image on the…
Castles
Drohiczyn
For centuries this hill above the River Bug carried a stronghold fought over by Ruthenian, Lithuanian and Masovian princes. Not a single wall of the castle survives, but Castle Hill in Drohiczyn, the historic capital of Podlasie, is today…
Silesian
Międzybrodzie Żywieckie
The top of Mount Żar looks nothing like it did half a century ago. In the 1970s it was levelled and turned into an artificial kite-shaped reservoir holding 2.31 million m³ of water. This is the upper reservoir of the Porąbka-Żar pumped-sto…
Technical monuments
Bytom
The Upper Silesian Narrow Gauge Railway, known locally as the "rosbanka", is a historic line with a track gauge of 785 mm that now carries tourists on a 21 km route from Bytom via Tarnowskie Góry to Miasteczko Śląskie. The network was buil…
Nature
Sandomierz
The rocks beneath your feet here settled on the floor of a Cambrian sea about 500 million years ago. The Pepper Mountains (Góry Pieprzowe), known locally as "Pieprzówki", form a steep escarpment above the Vistula about 2.5 km from Sandomie…
Nature
Olsztyn
These two bare limestone hills outside Olsztyn look as if someone had stacked white bales of goods on the grass, and according to one theory that's exactly where their name comes from (towar means goods in Polish). Góry Towarne hide a cave…
Churches & monasteries
Nurzec-Stacja
Holy Mount Grabarka (say "grah-BAR-kah") is the most important Eastern Orthodox pilgrimage site in Poland, a wooded hill near the town of Siemiatycze in the Podlasie region of northeastern Poland. Around its church stand thousands of woode…
Nature
Stara Wieś
Here some of the water flows out of a rock fissure on the bank, while the rest wells up from the bottom of a pool – an old oxbow of the River Warta. Granatowe Źródła ("Navy Blue Springs"), between Troniny and Stara Wieś, are the only examp…
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…
Historic sites
Lelów
At ul. Ogrodowa 7 in Lelów stands the ohel of David Biderman – the tomb of the tzadik who gave his name to the Lelov Hasidic dynasty. Every year, around the turn of January and February, Hasidim from Israel and the USA come here to pray at…
Monuments & mounds
Warszawa
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw (Grób Nieznanego Żołnierza) is Poland's most important national memorial: a symbolic grave for all soldiers who died for the country, set beneath the surviving arcade of the Saxon Palace on Piłsuds…
Mountains & peaks
Ogrodzieniec
Wielki Grochowiec is a treeless, rocky hill rising to 486 m above sea level in Ryczów (Ogrodzieniec municipality), just north of the road to Żelazko. From its flat, cross-topped summit the view sweeps all the way around the horizon, and th…
Historic sites
Byczyna
The Knights' Stronghold in Byczyna is a wooden fortress in Biskupice, on the shore of the Biskupice reservoir "Brzózki" and surrounded by forest. It was built from larch logs as a re-creation of a medieval stronghold and opened in Septembe…
Historic sites
Podzamcze
The Birów Hill Stronghold in Podzamcze is a timber reconstruction of a medieval fortified settlement, built on a rocky limestone hill about 1.5 km (1 mile) from Ogrodzieniec Castle in southern Poland. The palisade, towers and huts stand wh…
Historic sites
Pobiedziska
Gród Pobiedziska (roughly "groot poh-byeh-JEE-skah"; "gród" means a fortified settlement) is a reconstructed early medieval stronghold and family history park in western Poland, halfway between Poznań and Gniezno. Behind its timber palisad…
Museums
Giecz
Giecz on the Moskawa river is one of the oldest and most important strongholds of the early Piast state – some researchers even see it as the dynasty's ancestral seat. Today the site known as Grodziszczko is home to the Archaeological Rese…