Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Old towns & squares
Opatów
Opatów's Market Square (pronounced roughly "oh-PAH-toof"), officially Obrońców Pokoju Square, is a long, narrow square at the heart of one of the oldest towns in southeastern Poland's Świętokrzyskie region. An arcaded town hall lines the s…
Old towns & squares
Oświęcim
Oświęcim Market Square (Rynek Główny; the town's name is pronounced roughly "osh-VYEN-cheem") is the heart of a medieval Polish town whose German name, Auschwitz, became synonymous with the Holocaust. Most visitors come only for the Memori…
Old towns & squares
gmina Pilica
The trapezoid-shaped square in Pilica keeps the layout laid out when the town was chartered at the end of the 14th century – streets still leave from its corners exactly where the old roads to Kraków, Lelów, Żarnowiec and Sławków began. In…
Old towns & squares
Piwniczna-Zdrój
When fire swept through Piwniczna in 1876, the only thing to survive from the well on the market square was the statue of St Florian, patron saint of firefighters, which fell into the water. Today it stands on the rebuilt cistern in the mi…
Old towns & squares
Pruchnik
Once every house on the market square in Pruchnik had an arcade, so you could walk all the way around without leaving the shelter of a roof. Around 40 wooden buildings still stand around the square and along the lanes that lead off it, mos…
Old towns & squares
Prudnik
Prudnik's rectangular market square was laid out using the "Flemish rope", a medieval unit of measurement – which is why the square covers exactly one morgen (an old land measure). In the middle stands the town hall with a 63-metre tower,…
Old towns & squares
Przemyśl
Przemyśl Market Square (Rynek, say "RIH-nek"; the town is "PSHEH-mishl") is the heart of the old town of Przemyśl in southeastern Poland and one of the most unusual town squares in the country. Instead of a flat plaza, it slopes noticeably…
Old towns & squares
Przyrów
For more than a century and a half Przyrów was officially a village, yet its market square never stopped looking like a town's. Researchers studying small towns stripped of their status by the Tsarist reform of 1869–1870 ranked it second o…
Old towns & squares
Pszczyna
Every day at noon a bugle call rings out over the market square in Pszczyna, but it is not a solemn fanfare: it is based on a cheeky local folk song. The square, stretched from east to west, is one of the largest in southern Poland and kee…
Old towns & squares
Pyzdry
In 1383, during the siege of Pyzdry by the troops of Duke Siemowit IV of Masovia, chroniclers recorded the first use of a cannon on Polish soil. Since January 2024 a sculpture of three medieval gunners with their cannon has commemorated th…
Old towns & squares
Racibórz
Racibórz Market Square (Racibórz: rah-CHEE-boorsh) is the heart of one of the oldest towns in Upper Silesia, the historic industrial and cultural region of southern Poland. It is the natural place to start if you are looking for things to…
Old towns & squares
Rzeszów
The Market Square (Rynek) in Rzeszów (say "ZHEH-shoof") is the heart of the capital of Poland's southeastern Podkarpackie region – a cobbled square lined with pastel townhouses, with an ornate town hall in one corner, a statue of Tadeusz K…
Old towns & squares
Sandomierz
Sandomierz Market Square (Rynek in Sandomierz, pronounced roughly “san-DOH-myesh”) is the sloping heart of one of Poland’s oldest and best-preserved towns. A Gothic town hall crowned with a lacy Renaissance parapet stands in the middle, pa…
Old towns & squares
Siewierz
For almost three and a half centuries this square was the centre of a duchy ruled by the bishops of Kraków. Siewierz Market Square was laid out when the town received its charter in 1276, and it still keeps its medieval plan, with streets…
Old towns & squares
Skała
In the middle of the square stands an unusual monument: a bronze group – a duke, nuns, a mounted retinue – frozen at the moment the town was born. Skała is one of the oldest towns in Lesser Poland, and its market square with radiating stre…
Old towns & squares
Skoczów
Skoczów Market Square is an almost square plaza with streets running out from its corners – the surviving medieval layout of a town that the chronicler Jan Długosz called the first town on the upper Vistula. It is dominated by a late-Baroq…
Old towns & squares
Sławków
Sławków Market Square is the heart of a former town of the Bishops of Kraków, which grew rich on lead and silver and on the trade route from Kraków to Wrocław. In the square stands a town hall of 1905, and on one side the wooden Austeria,…
Old towns & squares
Stary Sącz
The market square of Stary Sącz looks just as you would picture a small Galician town: low, mostly 19th-century houses, a well beneath lime trees, and paving of Dunajec river cobbles that took 11 years to lay. It is the centre of one of Po…
Old towns & squares
Świdnica
Świdnica Market Square (say shfeed-NEE-tsah) is one of the best-preserved old town squares in Lower Silesia, the historic region of southwest Poland around Wrocław. Colorful Baroque townhouses frame a town hall with a rebuilt lookout tower…
Old towns & squares
Tarnów
Tarnów Market Square (Tarnów is pronounced roughly "TAR-noof") is the heart of a city that Poles like to call the "pearl of the Renaissance." Laid out in 1330, the square is lined with arcaded and gabled townhouses and centered on a striki…
Old towns & squares
Tarnowskie Góry
The Market Square in Tarnowskie Góry is considered one of the finest town squares in Upper Silesia. It is an irregular trapezium 108 m long – the gwarkowie, the town's ore miners, built their houses next to mine shafts rather than along a…
Old towns & squares
Ustroń
Ustroń's market square is not a medieval plaza lined with town houses but a modern space in front of the town hall, remodelled in 2008. Where a car park and taxi rank once stood, there are now benches, a fountain and a small stage under an…
Old towns & squares
Wałbrzych
On top of a corner house on Wałbrzych's Market Square sits an anchor – in a mountain town hundreds of kilometres from the sea. It symbolises the old trading links between Wałbrzych (German: Waldenburg) and lands overseas. The town's oldest…
Old towns & squares
Węgrów
In the sacristy of the church on Węgrów's market square hangs a metal mirror with a Latin inscription claiming that Master Twardowski, Poland's own Faust, once used it for sorcery, before it was "converted" to the service of God. That lege…