Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Klimontów
Grand Chancellor of the Crown Jerzy Ossoliński saw how churches were being built in Rome and wanted one of his own in the small town of Klimontów near Sandomierz. The result is St Joseph's Collegiate Church, with a rare elliptical nave sur…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Kruszwica
On the eastern shore of Lake Gopło stands a church that may have been a cathedral in the 12th century — before the bishops moved their seat to Włocławek. The Collegiate Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Kruszwica, built in 1120–1140, is o…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Brzeg
Much of the high altar in this church is painted – the columns, cornices and scenes in the chancel are an illusion created by a Jesuit's brush. The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Brzeg is a former Jesuit church whose vault a…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Kraków
The entire nave vault springs from a single column in the middle of the church and spreads overhead like the crown of a tree. The Church of the Holy Cross, next to the Słowacki Theatre, is one of the purest Gothic buildings in Kraków, and…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Przemyśl
In one of the frescoes in the nave, the army of the Prince of Transylvania besieges Przemyśl, and the town is saved through the intercession of St Vincent, whose relics the Franciscans here have kept since the 16th century. The Church of S…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Grodków
Above the early-Gothic chancel of Grodków's parish church lies a puzzle: when it was raised to the height of the nave in the late Middle Ages, the builders did not take down the old vault but simply built an unfinished upper storey above i…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Paczków
St. John the Evangelist's Church in Paczków (say “PATCH-koof”) is a Gothic church that was turned into a fortress in the 16th century, and it still looks the part: a brick hall crowned by a white Renaissance parapet with swallowtail merlon…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Białystok
In the Wysoki Stoczek district of Białystok stands a church that looks Baroque but is only a little over thirty years old. The Church of the Lord's Resurrection was built in 1991–1996 as an echo of a lost church in Berezwecz, in what is no…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Prudnik
In this forest monastery near Prudnik, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński spent a year as a prisoner of Poland's communist authorities — and it was here, reading Sienkiewicz's historical novel "The Deluge", that he came up with the idea of renewing…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Różanystok
The Różanystok Sanctuary (say “roo-ZHAH-nee-stok”) is a late-Baroque minor basilica and one of the main Catholic pilgrimage sites in Podlasie, Poland's quiet north-eastern corner near the borders with Belarus and Lithuania. Its twin-towere…
Churches & monasteries
Augustów
The two 50-metre towers of the basilica can be seen from far above the rooftops of central Augustów – although they were only rebuilt in 1986, more than forty years after the war. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the town's mos…
Churches & monasteries
Bielsk Podlaski
The oldest painting in the Bielsk basilica is a century and a half older than the church itself: a Crucifixion of 1622, painted as a memorial to Hanna Kadłubowska, wife of the local scribe Stanisław Kulesza. The Church of the Nativity of M…
Churches & monasteries
Olkusz
St. Andrew's Basilica in Olkusz (say "OL-koosh") is the Gothic parish church of Poland's old "Silver Town," standing at the corner of the Market Square about 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Kraków. Two treasures make it worth a detour: the l…
Churches & monasteries
Katowice
Panewniki Basilica – officially the Basilica of St. Louis the King and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – is a Neo-Romanesque Franciscan church in Katowice, southern Poland, best known for one of the largest moving nativity scenes…
Churches & monasteries
Trzemeszno
From outside you notice the dome first, yet the oldest parts of this church go back to the reign of Duke Bolesław the Wrymouth. The Basilica of the Assumption and St Michael the Archangel in Trzemeszno is a former monastery church of the C…
Churches & monasteries
Białystok
Its crystal-shaped dome is meant to evoke the imagery of the Book of Revelation, and beneath it parishioners spent years pouring foundations and carrying bricks themselves. The Orthodox Church of the Resurrection in Białystok's Leśna Dolin…
Churches & monasteries
Zamarski
First there was only the tower: for almost a century and a half the faithful prayed in an open space beneath a belfry, because there simply was no church. The wooden tower of St Roch's Church in Zamarski, rebuilt around 1585, is according…
Churches & monasteries
Ojców
The wooden Chapel on the Water ("Na Wodzie"), dedicated to St Joseph the Worker, straddles the Prądnik stream on concrete supports set into both banks, beneath white limestone crags known as the Prałatki. It is one of the most photographed…
Churches & monasteries
Racibórz
The Castle Chapel of St. Thomas Becket in Racibórz (rah-CHEE-boosh) is the Gothic jewel of the town's Piast Castle, often called the "pearl of Silesian Gothic" and the "Silesian Sainte-Chapelle." Built in the late 13th century and dedicate…
Churches & monasteries
Siedlce
The two brick towers of Siedlce Cathedral are 75 m high and the tallest structure in town, visible from far across the flat landscape of eastern Mazovia. The Neo-Gothic Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1906–1912 and became…
Churches & monasteries
Mogilno
In the crypt of St John's Church, four bays of vaulting rest on a single stone pillar known as "the abbot" – the oldest Romanesque groin vault of its kind in Poland. The former Benedictine Abbey in Mogilno has stood on a hill above Lake Mo…
Churches & monasteries
Rudy
The coat of arms of Rudy Abbey bore the letters MORS, Latin for "death", but they meant something else: Morimond, the French abbey from which the local Cistercians descended. For over 550 years the monks founded villages, fishponds, brewer…
Churches & monasteries
Kartuzy
Above the main entrance of Kartuzy's collegiate church an angel with a scythe swings back and forth: it is the pendulum of a clock built into the organ gallery, and the whole church is covered by a roof shaped like a coffin lid. Both carry…
Churches & monasteries
Przeworsk
The Basilica of the Holy Spirit in Przeworsk (say "PSHEH-vorsk") is a 15th-century Gothic church in southeastern Poland that was run for over four centuries by the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, an order founded in Jerusalem. Its tr…