Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Częstochowa
In 1661 King John Casimir received Cossack envoys in this hall, and the next day the ambassadors of the Tsar – for a few days a monastery room became the throne room of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Knights' Hall on the first flo…
Museums
Barczewo
"We shall not abandon the land we come from" – the music for these words by Maria Konopnicka, the patriotic hymn "Rota", was written by a boy from Barczewo. Feliks Nowowiejski was born here on 7 February 1877, when the town was called Wart…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Above the Łagiewniki district rises a white, elliptical building shaped like a boat, with a slender tower topped by a cross beside it. This is the Basilica of Divine Mercy, the newest part of a shrine that pilgrims from around the world ca…
Churches & monasteries
Rataje
Górka Klasztorna near Łobżenica is regarded as the oldest Marian sanctuary in Poland. According to tradition, in 1079 the Virgin Mary with the Child appeared here to a shepherd at a well in the Górka Grove. Today it is a complex with a bar…
Churches & monasteries
Ślemień
The story of Jasna Górka begins with a miracle that – as the parish itself admits – someone decided to "make". According to tradition, in the mid-14th century a highlander from Ślemień, back from a pilgrimage to Częstochowa, dipped a holy…
Churches & monasteries
Gietrzwałd
The Gietrzwałd Marian Shrine (gyet-ZHVAHLD) is the only site in Poland where Marian apparitions have been officially approved by the Catholic Church. In the summer of 1877 two girls reported seeing the Virgin Mary here, and today pilgrims…
Churches & monasteries
Kałków
Amid the fields of the Świętokrzyskie region stands a building that looks like a medieval castle, 33 metres high. This is the Golgotha, the heart of the sanctuary in Kałków-Godów and a kind of national pantheon: inside are chapels commemor…
Churches & monasteries
Limanowa
The stone basilica with its 60-metre tower dominates the centre of Limanowa and is the main Marian shrine of the Island Beskids. Its altar holds a 14th-century Pietà carved from limewood, crowned in 1966 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, and the…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Our Lady of Fatima Sanctuary at Krzeptówki (kshep-TOOF-kee) in Zakopane is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Tatra region and a church closely tied to Pope John Paul II. Local highlanders built it as a thank-offering af…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
On 13 May 1950, a group of lay people who had just finished a retreat in Trzebinia decided not to go home but to spend the whole night praying in front of a grotto. This was the first of the Fatima vigils for which the Basilica of the Sacr…
Churches & monasteries
Krasnobród
At the heart of the baroque shrine in Krasnobród is an image smaller than a postcard – just 9 × 14 cm. According to tradition it was found in 1649 in the mud of a site ravaged by Cossacks, and during the Second World War parishioners smugg…
Churches & monasteries
Żarki
According to tradition, in 1382 Duke Władysław of Opole, who was carrying the Black Madonna icon to Jasna Góra, stopped in the forest near Żarki and prayed for water – and a spring gushed from beneath a stone. The Shrine of Our Lady of Leś…
Churches & monasteries
Licheń Stary
The golden dome of Licheń is visible from far across the flat plain near Konin, and the basilica tower rises to 141.5 m. The Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń is now the largest church in Poland, yet the sanctuary began with a small picture h…
Churches & monasteries
Maków Podhalański
Above Maków Podhalański, a small town on the Skawa river in the Maków Beskids, rises the Church of the Transfiguration – the shrine of Our Lady of Maków, venerated as Guardian and Queen of Families. The main altar holds a 16th-century pain…
Churches & monasteries
Pińczów
Pińczów has two faces: its Renaissance market square and Mirów – once a separate little town founded in 1592 by Zygmunt Myszkowski. In Mirów stands the Church of the Visitation with its Franciscan friary, home to the miraculous image of Ou…
Churches & monasteries
Korbielów
The brick church with a red roof in the centre of Korbielów holds a painting that has travelled a long way: from Bohorodczany in Poland's former eastern borderlands, now in Ukraine, to this village below Pilsko. Since 1974 the image of the…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
Miners have made pilgrimages to Płoki since the Middle Ages – hence the unusual title of its Madonna: Our Lady, Patroness of Working Families. The high altar of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary holds a 15th-century image of th…
Churches & monasteries
Dąbrówka Kościelna
The Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Dąbrówka Kościelna (roughly "dom-BROOF-kah kosh-CHEL-nah") is a Marian pilgrimage church in the countryside of Greater Poland. It sits on a hill above a small village between Poznań and Gniezno, Pol…
Churches & monasteries
Lidzbark Warmiński
A Baroque rotunda surrounded by cloisters with corner chapels stands among the fields of Warmia, far from any town. In 1953 the communist authorities imprisoned the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, here – his cell and a memori…
Churches & monasteries
Rokitno
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Rokitno (pronounced "roh-KEET-noh") is the main Marian shrine of the Zielona Góra-Gorzów diocese and a Baroque basilica built between 1746 and 1762, declared a Polish Historic Monument in November 2024. Its hig…
Churches & monasteries
Zawiercie
In Skarżyce, a separate village until 1977 and now part of Zawiercie, stands a church you could not mistake for any other in the Jura. Three white chapel rotundas, symbolising the Holy Trinity, adjoin a 12th-century stone tower. The Church…
Churches & monasteries
Skępe
The sanctuary in Skępe is a late-Gothic Bernardine church and friary with four wings of Baroque cloisters, born of a vision during a plague in 1495. The small statue venerated here, Our Lady Expecting, shows Mary awaiting a child, which is…
Churches & monasteries
gmina Pilica
The painting before which pilgrims pray in Pilica-Biskupice measures just 37.5 × 25 cm, and according to tradition it was found in a roadside inn by a bishop who stumbled upon two boards that together formed an image of the Virgin. Today t…
Churches & monasteries
Augustów
The Sanctuary of Our Lady in Studzieniczna (roughly "stoo-dzhen-EECH-nah") is the most important pilgrimage site of the Augustów area in northeastern Poland: a wooden church and a white chapel on a former island in Lake Studzieniczne, abou…