Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Nature
Kozy
The wall of the old quarry in Kozy shows how layers of sandstone and shale – black, green and bluish-grey – settled on the sea floor over millions of years. For more than 80 years stone for roads and railways was extracted here; today the…
Nature
Janów
Pale rock walls in the middle of a Jura forest look like a western film set – and a western was indeed shot here. But the name of the Warsaw Quarry (Kamieniołom Warszawski) in Siedlec comes from something else: the limestone cut here, rega…
Nature
Sokoły
Between Waniewo and Śliwno the Narew does not flow in a single channel – it splits into a maze of branches, oxbows and reed beds. A wooden boardwalk cuts straight across this marshy valley, and you cross the open water yourself on floating…
Nature
Gdynia
The Orłowo Cliff (Klif Orłowski, roughly "kleef or-WOV-skee") in Gdynia is one of the most striking natural sights on Poland's Baltic coast: a steep, crumbling wall of glacial clay that drops straight into the Bay of Gdańsk. It sits on the…
Nature
Piekary Śląskie
Kocie Górki is a hilly, birch-covered area on the border of Piekary Śląskie and Radzionków – one of the town's most valuable natural sites, alongside Żabie Doły, Winna Góra and Księża Góra. Different habitats sit side by side in a small sp…
Nature
Poznań
In late winter the slopes of the former palace park in Radojewo, on the northern edge of Poznań, turn yellow with winter aconites – plants that once escaped here from the palace garden. A few weeks later the woodland floor turns purple and…
Nature
Łęknica
The colourful lakes of the Muskau Arch are best explored on the "Former Babina Mine" geotourism trail between Nowe Czaple and Łęknica. These are not natural lakes but flooded pits and subsidence hollows left by a lignite mine that operated…
Nature
Gruszków
The Colorful Lakes (Kolorowe Jeziorka, say "ko-lo-RO-veh yeh-ZHOR-ka") in the Rudawy Janowickie mountains are four small ponds filling old pyrite mine pits above the village of Wieściszowice in Lower Silesia, southwestern Poland. Each has…
Nature
Sudół
Krzemionki (pronounced ksheh-MYON-kee) is a Neolithic flint mine near Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski in central-southern Poland, where prehistoric miners dug thousands of shafts to extract a rare striped flint for axes. It is one of the best-pres…
Nature
Żarki
Drive along regional road 792 from Żarki towards Jaworznik and you suddenly see where the Polish Jura ends. The limestone upland breaks off in a steep step, with the wide valley of the upper Warta River spread out below. This is the Jurass…
Nature
Kalety
This woodland meadow in Kalety, between the Miotek district and the town centre on Paderewskiego Street, is officially the ecological site "Purple Moor-Grass Meadow in Kalety". Locals call it the iris meadow because in June it fills with S…
Nature
Podlesice
Before you head in among the white rocks of Góra Zborów, you can spend a few minutes seeing what the whole Jura is made of. The Lapidarium in Podlesice is an open-air display of the typical rocks of the Kraków-Wieluń Upland, from Jurassic…
Nature
Trzebnica
A short walk from the Basilica of St Hedwig, the Beech Forest begins – locals also call it Pustelnik, "the Hermit". Under tall beeches stand the chapels of an 18th-century Calvary, a brick forest church from 1886, a Lourdes grotto and the…
Nature
Warszawa
Kabacki Forest (Las Kabacki, roughly "lass kah-BAHTS-kee") is a protected nature reserve on the southern edge of Warsaw, covering more than 900 hectares of old mixed woodland right at the end of the city's M1 metro line. It is the easiest…
Nature
Olsztyn
From the High Gate in Olsztyn, a red-marked trail leads straight into a forest where it is easy to forget you are still in a city. Olsztyn City Forest covers 1,415.87 ha, entirely within the city limits, and Olsztyn describes it as the lar…
Nature
Katowice
The highest point in Katowice is not a tower block or a slag heap but the beech-covered Wanda Hill (Wzgórze Wandy, about 357 m above sea level). Its slopes hold the Las Murckowski nature reserve – a patch of mixed forest that comes closer…
Nature
Bydgoszcz
Myślęcinek Forest Park (roughly "mish-len-CHEE-nek") in Bydgoszcz is one of the most rewarding things to do in this northern Polish city if you like green space: some 830 hectares (2,050 acres) of woodland, hills, valleys and ponds just no…
Nature
Żarki
By the road from Żarki to Jaworznik grows a lime tree that locals call "Babka" – "Granny". It is more than 500 years old; only about a third of its trunk is left and the wood is partly rotten, yet the tree is still alive and puts out new s…
Nature
Władysławowo
Between Jastrzębia Góra and Rozewie the coast is cut by a narrow ravine that takes you from the clifftop straight down to the beach. Lisi Jar – "Fox Ravine" – is only about 350 metres long, but in places it is 50 metres deep, and its slope…
Nature
Jastrzębik
The Henryk Świdziński Mofette, on the border of Jastrzębik and Złockie near Muszyna, is the largest and most productive mofette in Poland. Gas that is 95% carbon dioxide bubbles up constantly from the bed of the Złocki stream. An area of a…
Nature
Kroczyce
At the top of a limestone crag in the village of Piaseczno gapes a window measuring about 7 × 5 m – hence the name Okiennik Wielki, roughly "the Great Window Rock", one of the symbols of the northern Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, known as the…
Nature
Świerzawa
On the slope of Wielisławka hill, dozens of vertical stone columns stand side by side like the pipes of a giant organ. Organy Wielisławskie, the "Wielisław Organ Pipes" in Sędziszowa near Świerzawa, are the remains of a volcano more than 2…
Nature
Biedrusko
Just 15 km from central Poznań, on the road to Biedrusko, a wooden watermill rebuilt the traditional way – without a single nail – stands beside a 3-hectare pond. Since July 2011 it has housed the Łysy Młyn Forest Education Centre of the Ł…
Nature
gmina Kroczyce
The Kraków-Częstochowa Upland – the "Polish Jura" – is a belt of limestone outcrops about 80 km long between Kraków and Częstochowa, and the Kroczyce municipality sits in its most rewarding part for climbers. On the Skały Kroczyckie ridge,…