Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
National parks
Zwierzyniec
Roztocze National Park (Roztoczański Park Narodowy; say "ross-TOH-cheh") is Poland's most heavily forested national park, with woodland covering 95.5% of its area. It lies in the Lublin region of eastern Poland, right next to the small tow…
Lakes
Solina
Whole villages lie beneath the surface of Lake Solina — the historic village of Solina, Teleśnica Sanna, Horodek, Sokole, Chrewt and much of Wołkowyja disappeared under water when the reservoir began to fill in 1968. Today it is Poland's l…
Hiking & tourist trails
Zakopane
Orla Perć ("Eagle's Path," roughly "OR-lah PERCH") is the most famous and widely considered the hardest marked hiking trail in the Polish Tatra Mountains: a red-marked ridge route between the Zawrat and Krzyżne passes, crossing Kozi Wierch…
National parks
Karłów
Table Mountains National Park (Park Narodowy Gór Stołowych; "GOOR stoh-WOH-vikh") protects Poland's only table mountains: a flat-topped sandstone plateau on the Czech border, carved by erosion into rock mazes, deep crevices and mushroom-sh…
Old towns & squares
Warszawa
Warsaw's most famous monument is almost 180 years older than the square it stands on. Sigismund's Column, honouring King Sigismund III Vasa, was raised in 1644 in front of the Kraków Gate, outside the city walls, while Castle Square itself…
Castles
Sucha
For more than forty years Czocha Castle did not appear on any map. From 1952 it housed a military holiday centre, and as a classified military site it was left off official maps until the 1990s — one of the best-known castles in Lower Sile…
Castles
Warszawa
On 12 January 1578, at the wedding of Chancellor Jan Zamoyski and Krystyna Radziwiłł, the manor house at Ujazdów staged the first performance of Jan Kochanowski's "The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys" — regarded as the first tragedy written…
Landmarks
Kraków
The Sigismund Bell (in Polish Dzwon Zygmunta, roughly "dzvon zig-MOON-tah") hangs in the tower of Wawel Cathedral in Kraków and is Poland's most famous bell. Cast more than 500 years ago, it rings only on the most important religious and n…
Monuments & mounds
Kraków
Kościuszko Mound in Kraków (say "kosh-CHOOSH-ko") is a 34-meter earthen hill raised by hand in 1820–1823 in honor of Tadeusz Kościuszko — the Polish-Lithuanian general who fought in the American Revolutionary War and later led the 1794 upr…
Monuments & mounds
Kraków
In Mogiła, now part of Kraków's Nowa Huta district, stands a mound that nobody has fully explained. Wanda Mound was probably raised in the 7th–8th century, and since the Middle Ages it has been seen as the grave of the legendary daughter o…
Gardens
Warszawa
On 27 May 1727 King Augustus II the Strong opened the garden of his Warsaw palace to the townspeople — creating Poland's first public park. Anyone could come in, as long as they were decently dressed. Today the Saxon Garden covers 15.5 hec…
Old towns & squares
Warszawa
The town houses around Warsaw's Old Town Market Square look centuries old, but most are about 70 years old. After the 1944 Warsaw Uprising the square lay in ruins, and in 1949–1953 it was rebuilt so faithfully that in 1980 the Historic Cen…
Castles
Krasiczyn
Krasiczyn Castle (say "krah-SHEE-chin") is one of the finest Renaissance residences in Poland, set in the San River valley about 6 miles (10 km) west of Przemyśl, in the country's far southeast. Its square layout, four very different corne…
Castles
Łańcut
Łańcut Castle (say "WAHN-tsoot") is one of the grandest aristocratic residences in Poland and the jewel of the Podkarpackie region in the country's southeast. For more than three centuries it belonged to two of Poland's most powerful famil…
Churches & monasteries
Łódź
The tallest building in Łódź is not an office tower but a church. The tower of the Archcathedral Basilica of St Stanislaus Kostka at 265 Piotrkowska Street rises 104.5 metres, and the church itself — built of bare, pale-yellow brick — was…
Mountains & peaks
Wisła
On the summit of Czantoria Wielka (995 m) you can stand with one foot in Poland and the other in the Czech Republic — and at the same time on Poland's main watershed, which divides the basins of the Vistula and the Oder. It is one of the m…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
On 23 June 1597 the Jesuits laid the foundations of a church on Grodzka Street to the music of three choirs, with Mass said under a tent. So began the construction of Kraków's first fully Baroque building, funded by King Sigismund III Vasa…
Old towns & squares
Warszawa
On Krakowskie Przedmieście you can walk through four centuries of Polish history in an hour: from St Anne's Church, where Pope John Paul II met young people in 1979, past the University of Warsaw and the Presidential Palace, to a pillar in…
Technical monuments
Gliwice
The Gliwice Radio Station (pronounced "glee-VEE-tseh") is where World War II was staged before it began. On the evening of August 31, 1939, German SS men disguised as Polish insurgents seized the station and broadcast a fake "Polish attack…
Churches & monasteries
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska (pronounced roughly kal-VAR-ya zeb-zhi-DOV-ska) is a 17th-century pilgrimage park in the hills southwest of Kraków: a Bernardine monastery and basilica plus 42 chapels and churches scattered across wooded slopes, laid…
Mountains & peaks
Wołosate
Tarnica (1,346 m) is the highest peak of the Polish Bieszczady Mountains and of the whole Podkarpackie region — and the best viewpoint in this corner of the Carpathians. When the air is exceptionally clear, you can see not only the Tatras…
Landmarks
Warszawa
From the terrace of the Palace of Culture, Złote Tarasy looks like a glass wave spilling between Warsaw Central Station and Złota Street. Beneath its undulating steel-and-glass roof is one of Warsaw's best-known shopping centres, opened on…
Museums
Kraków
Nicolaus Copernicus studied in this building in the 1490s. The Collegium Maius at 15 Jagiellońska Street is the oldest surviving building of the Jagiellonian University and home to its museum: a Gothic courtyard with arcades, rooms where p…
Cities & towns
Kraków
For almost five hundred years Kazimierz was not a district of Kraków but a separate town — with its own market square, town hall and walls, cut off from Kraków by a branch of the Vistula. King Casimir the Great founded it on 27 February 13…