Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Karpacz
Vang Stave Church in Karpacz is a medieval Norwegian wooden church that has stood on a mountainside in southwest Poland since the 1840s. Built in the late 12th or around the turn of the 13th century in Vang, Norway, it was bought by the Ki…
Churches & monasteries
Lubomierz
The soaring three-storey façade of this church looks down on Lubomierz from the town's highest point. It is the heart of the former Benedictine convent where the town's history began, and one of the grandest Baroque churches in this part o…
Churches & monasteries
Kamieniec Ząbkowicki
The former Cistercian church in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki is 70 m long and 24 m high, and its aisles all rise to the same height – a Gothic hall church, a rarity among Cistercian buildings. Inside stands one of the tallest wooden altarpieces in…
Churches & monasteries
Legnica
In an octagonal chapel beside St John's Church in Legnica, four alabaster figures hold a conversation that never ends. They are the last of the Piasts, the dynasty that founded Poland: fifteen-year-old Duke George William, his parents and…
Museums
Karpacz
Henryk Tomaszewski, founder of the Wrocław Pantomime Theatre, brought toys home from every tour – dolls, teddy bears, figurines. That travelling collection became the Municipal Toy Museum in Karpacz, housed since 2012 in the restored forme…
Museums
Wrocław
The Museum of Architecture in Wrocław is the only museum of its kind in Poland, housed in the late-Gothic buildings of a former Bernardine (Franciscan) monastery a few minutes from the Market Square. The setting alone is worth the visit: a…
Museums
Milicz
For nearly half a century, glass Christmas baubles were hand-blown and hand-painted in Milicz and shipped to every continent; one of the customers is said to have been Walt Disney himself. The factory closed in 2008, but its pattern archiv…
Museums
Bolesławiec
Since April 2024 the Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec has had a new home: the restored Pückler mansion at ul. Zgorzelecka 28/29, set in a revitalised historic park. It is the best place to understand how Bolesławiec stoneware became famou…
Museums
Ziębice
The town hall in the middle of Ziębice’s market square has housed a museum since 1931, and for half a century it was the only museum in Poland specialising in household equipment. According to the museum, its collection of irons is the lar…
Museums
Lubomierz
Almost everyone in Poland knows the comedy Sami swoi ("All Friends Here"), shot by Sylwester Chęciński in Lubomierz in 1967. It tells of the feud between two neighbours, Kargul and Pawlak, peasants resettled from the east to Lower Silesia…
Museums
Jelenia Góra
The Karkonosze Museum holds more than 9,000 pieces of art glass – from Baroque goblets made in local mountain glassworks to an iridescent plate by Louis Tiffany. The building at Matejki Street 28 was built for the museum in 1912–1914, and…
Museums
Legnica
Above the entrance to the Baroque palace at ul. Partyzantów 3 you can see the letters LAL – short for "Lodovicus Abbas Lubensis", Abbot Ludwig Bauch of Lubiąż. For more than sixty years this building from 1728 has housed Poland's only muse…
Museums
Wrocław
The National Museum in Wrocław is one of Poland's major art museums and the best place to explore the art of Silesia, from medieval stone carving to 19th-century painting. It occupies a grand, vine-covered building on the Oder River, a 15-…
Museums
Wałbrzych
The Porcelain Museum in Wałbrzych (roughly "VAH-wb-zhikh") is a small but rewarding museum in Lower Silesia, southwest Poland. Set in the neoclassical Alberti Palace in the city center, it displays more than 10,000 pieces of Silesian and E…
Museums
Jawor
The Regional Museum in Jawor occupies the former Bernardine monastery at ul. Klasztorna 6, close to the Church of Peace. The Gothic hall church with its cloisters and garth is itself the main exhibit: it preserves a late Gothic cycle of Pa…
Museums
Sobótka
The Stanisław Dunajewski Ślęża Museum in Sobótka tells the story of a mountain that has drawn people for thousands of years – its ancient beliefs, the nature of the massif and the history of the town at its foot. It occupies the Abbot's Ho…
Museums
Karpacz
The Museum of Sport and Tourism in Karpacz tells how the Karkonosze (Giant Mountains) became the mountains of hikers, lugers and skiers. Its collection holds something you will not see anywhere else in Poland: a full set of participation m…
Museums
Kudowa-Zdrój
Behind the fence at 46b Zdrojowa Street, in a small house with a mansard roof, live more than 5,500 toys – from figurines two thousand years old to video game consoles. The Toy Museum in Kudowa-Zdrój opened in December 2002 as the first pr…
Museums
Kletno
More than 40 fossilised dinosaur eggs in four nests, some 70 million years old – according to the museum, this is the only place in Poland where you can see such a collection. The Museum of the Earth in Kletno is a private geological museu…
Churches & monasteries
Lubiąż
Lubiąż Abbey (roughly "LOO-byonzh") is one of the largest monastic complexes in Europe and a masterpiece of Silesian Baroque: its facade stretches about 223 m (730 ft) and the buildings hold more than 300 rooms. Set above the Oder River ab…
Palaces
Kłodzko
More than a hundred rooms, some 6,000 m² of floor space and sgraffito from 1560 scratched into wet plaster: Gorzanów near Bystrzyca Kłodzka is one of the largest and oldest residences in the Kłodzko Land. It has never burned down or been d…
Palaces
Jedlina-Zdrój
In 1944 the construction of the Riese complex in the Owl Mountains was run from this white palace in Jedlina-Zdrój: it housed the Organisation Todt's construction headquarters, and the building itself bore the code name "Villa Erika". Toda…
Palaces
Jelenia Góra
When fire destroyed Chojnik Castle in 1675, the Schaffgotsch family needed a new seat – and found it at the foot of the same hill. Work on the palace in Sobieszów began in 1705; according to the European Route of Castles and Palaces, it wa…
Gardens
Wałbrzych
The Wałbrzych Palm House (Wałbrzych is pronounced roughly "VAH-wb-zhikh") is a historic glasshouse built in the early 20th century by the aristocratic owners of nearby Książ Castle. Under its glass dome grow date palms and more than 250 pl…