Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Palaces
Łopuszna
Łopuszna Manor House (Łopuszna is pronounced roughly "wo-POOSH-nah") is one of the finest surviving wooden manor houses of the Polish gentry, a whitewashed single-story home with a tall shingled mansard roof, set at the foot of the Gorce M…
Palaces
Modlnica
For twelve years the ethnographer Oskar Kolberg lived in the white Konopka family manor in Modlnica, just outside Kraków, working on further volumes of his monumental "Lud" ("The People"). Today the classicist residence, with its columned…
Landmarks
Szczawnica
When the rebuilding of Dworek Gościnny in Szczawnica began in 2008, no plans of the building survived. The architects had an old postcard showing a man standing in front of the entrance – they assumed he was about 180 cm tall and used him…
Museums
Kraków
Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory in Kraków is the building where the German industrialist made famous by Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List employed and ultimately protected more than 1,100 Jews during World War II. Today it houses a bran…
Other
Lanckorona
Once a year, in December, Lanckorona turns into a town of angels. The winter festival Anioł w Miasteczku (Angel in the Town) is three days of events in many places at once: an Angel Christmas Market runs on the market square, while concert…
Caves
Ojców
King Łokietek's Cave (Jaskinia Łokietka, roughly "yahs-KEEN-yah wo-KYET-kah") is the largest known cave in Ojców National Park, a small and beautiful protected area of limestone valleys about 25 km north of Kraków. A guided walk leads thro…
Caves
Wierzchowie
Wierzchowska Górna Cave (say "vyeh-HOV-skah GOOR-nah") in the village of Wierzchowie is Poland's longest show cave, about 15 km (9 miles) northwest of Kraków in the Kraków Valleys Landscape Park. A lit, guided route of about 700 m (2,300 f…
Museums
Kraków
Hipolit House (Kamienica Hipolitów, pronounced roughly "kah-myeh-NEE-tsah hee-po-LEE-toof") is a small branch of the Museum of Kraków on Mariacki Square, right behind St. Mary's Basilica in the city's UNESCO-listed Old Town. Medieval cella…
Churches & monasteries
Kęty
Kęty is where John Cantius was most likely born, on 24 June 1390 – professor at the Kraków Academy, saint and the town's patron. The Baroque church named after him stands near the site of his family home, and on 20 October 2024 it became a…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Jaszczurówka Chapel (yash-choo-ROOF-kah), formally the Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is one of the most beautiful wooden buildings in Zakopane and a textbook example of the "Zakopane style." It was designed by Stanisław Witkiewi…
Churches & monasteries
Tarnów
Tarnów Cathedral – the Cathedral Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary – is the centerpiece of Tarnów's Old Town and home to some of the finest Renaissance tomb sculpture in Central Europe. Its red-brick bulk and 72-meter tow…
Churches & monasteries
Stary Sącz
The Poor Clares Monastery in Stary Sącz (say "STAH-ri sonch") is the most important historic site in the Sącz region of southern Poland, about 100 km southeast of Kraków. Founded in 1280 by St. Kinga, a medieval duchess who spent her final…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
For years the people of Nowa Huta, a model socialist-realist town built for steelworkers, fought the communist authorities for a new church. The result of their persistence is the Ark of the Lord (Arka Pana), a boat-shaped church with a 70…
Churches & monasteries
Nowy Sącz
At the end of the 18th century the Austrian authorities turned this church into a military storehouse, and the altar with its miraculous painting was simply boarded up. Today the Holy Spirit Church on Piotra Skargi Street is one of the mos…
Churches & monasteries
Dobczyce
From the outside it is a stone post-war basilica whose tower rises above the market square of Dobczyce. Inside, however, is a Gothic 15th-century Pietà linked to the workshop of Veit Stoss, a medieval crucifix and a 13th-century stoup – th…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The church in Harenda arrived in Zakopane by train. Built in 1710–1720 in Zakrzów near Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, it stood unused and decaying after a new church was built there, until in 1947–1948 it was dismantled, carried to the foot of the…
Churches & monasteries
Czchów
From the market square in Czchów you see a stepped brick gable above a stone church – one of the oldest churches along the Dunajec river. Its chancel was built before 1360, probably funded by King Casimir the Great, and its east wall conta…
Churches & monasteries
Inwałd
The painting on the high altar of the church in Inwałd has an unusual nickname: Our Lady of the Robbers. According to legend it was brought here by brigands, and their leader handed it over to the villagers after his conversion. The church…
Churches & monasteries
Zielonki
From the street you first see a modernist entrance of 1966 crowned by an openwork steel tripod with a cross. Behind it, though, is a late Gothic 16th-century church with Renaissance details carved by stonemasons then working in Kraków. The…
Churches & monasteries
Sucha Beskidzka
In Sucha Beskidzka, two churches linked by a corridor share the dedication to the Visitation of the Virgin Mary: an intimate stone "old church" of 1613–1614 and Teodor Talowski's monumental parish church with a 54-metre tower. The first ho…
Churches & monasteries
Czorsztyn
From the outside it is a modest 1980s church with a steep roof and a small bell turret. Inside, though, it keeps mementoes of a world that vanished under water: furnishings from the church of Stare Maniowy, flooded when Lake Czorsztyn was…
Churches & monasteries
Libiąż
The Church of the Transfiguration at 83 Oświęcimska Street in Libiąż is a red-brick Neo-Gothic church from the early 20th century whose interior deliberately imitates St Mary's Basilica in Kraków. Under a deep-blue, star-studded vault stan…
Landmarks
Zator
The wooden Church of St Andrew in Graboszyce near Zator stands opposite a Renaissance fortified manor built by the same founder, Dziwisz (Dionizy) Brandys. It was built around 1585 in the Silesian-Lesser Poland style, and its oddity is a t…
Churches & monasteries
Liszki
To build the church in Morawica, Prince August Aleksander Czartoryski sold the treasures of the chapel at Tenczyn Castle and then had half of Morawica's old castle pulled down. On its rubble, between 1743 and 1748, rose the Baroque Church…