Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Chęciny
The Franciscans came to Chęciny in 1368 at the invitation of King Casimir the Great and, with a long break, are still here. In between, their friary burned, served as a Protestant church, spent more than a century as a prison and, under co…
Churches & monasteries
Łódź
Long before Łódź became an industrial city, pilgrims were already heading to the shrine of St Anthony in Łagiewniki on its northern edge. This Baroque Franciscan complex, with a brick church consecrated in 1726, began with a wooden votive…
Churches & monasteries
Nowa Słupia
Święty Krzyż Monastery (say "SHVYEN-ti kshish," meaning "Holy Cross") crowns Łysa Góra, a 594 m summit in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains of central Poland. This former Benedictine abbey has kept relics believed to be fragments of the True Cr…
Churches & monasteries
Ruciane-Nida
On Lake Duś, a kilometre from the Masurian village of Wojnowo, stands a modest yellow building with an eight-pointed cross on its small tower. This is a former monastery of the Old Believers – Russian Orthodox Christians who rejected the c…
Churches & monasteries
Jędrzejów
The Cistercian Archabbey in Jędrzejów (YEN-dzheh-yoof), a town in south-central Poland between Kraków and Kielce, is the oldest Cistercian monastery in the country, founded in 1140 by monks from Morimond in France. It is also the shrine of…
Churches & monasteries
Kamieniec Ząbkowicki
The former Cistercian abbey in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki is one of the most important monastic complexes in Lower Silesia: a mighty Gothic church with a Baroque interior and the former abbots' palace, with Marianne of Orange's Neo-Gothic palace…
Churches & monasteries
Koprzywnica
In the high-altar painting of the Assumption, made by Bartłomiej Strobel in 1645, tradition has it that King Władysław IV Vasa appears among the figures. This portrait is one of many secrets of the former Cistercian abbey in Koprzywnica ne…
Churches & monasteries
Częstochowa
Mstów Monastery (say "mm-STOOF") is a fortified complex of the Canons Regular of the Lateran on the Warta River, in the village of Wancerzów just outside Mstów, a short drive northeast of Częstochowa in southern Poland. Behind a wall lined…
Churches & monasteries
Rzeszów
In the chancel of the Bernardine church in Rzeszów, eight members of the Ligęza family kneel in prayer – life-size, carved in alabaster and facing the altar. It is said to be the largest group of alabaster praying figures in Europe. The ch…
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
Wigry
Wigry Monastery is a former Camaldolese hermitage on a peninsula in Lake Wigry, a short drive from Suwałki in northeastern Poland. Its white late-Baroque church towers, row of little hermit houses and lakeside setting make it the best-know…
Churches & monasteries
Zagórz
On Mariemont Hill above a bend in the Osława river stand the walls of a monastery that was also a fortress: the Discalced Carmelites prayed here behind five-metre defensive walls and ran a hospital next door for twelve war veterans. In 177…
Churches & monasteries
Żarnowiec
On 10 August 1946 twelve Benedictine nuns from Vilnius arrived at the empty convent above Lake Żarnowiec — with a few belongings and a single goat. They brought back to life a place where no nun had lived since 1866, though its history rea…
Churches & monasteries
Góra Świętej Anny
St. Anne's Mountain (Góra Świętej Anny, roughly "GOO-rah shvyen-TAY AH-nee") is a Franciscan pilgrimage shrine with a baroque basilica, a monastery and a hillside Calvary, set on top of an extinct volcano in Poland's Opole region. It is th…
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…
Mountains & peaks
Kłodzko
For decades Kłodzka Góra (757 m) was thought to be the highest peak of the Bardzkie Mountains, which earned it a place in the Crown of Polish Mountains, a popular list of the highest summit in each range, even though newer surveys showed t…
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…
Castles
Koniaków
Anyone who comes to Koczy Zamek ("Kocsi's Castle") looking for ruins leaves with a panorama instead. This treeless hill near Koniaków, 847 m above sea level, has no castle, and its name hides two stories: a romantic legend about a Hungaria…
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…
Churches & monasteries
Sokółka
The Collegiate Church of St. Anthony in Sokółka (so-KOOL-ka), also known as the Shrine of the Eucharistic Miracle, is a neoclassical church with two towers and a gate-style bell tower. Pilgrims have come here from all over Poland since 200…
Churches & monasteries
Wiślica
The Collegiate Basilica in Wiślica (pronounced roughly "veesh-LEE-tsah"), dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, is a Gothic church founded by King Casimir the Great and one of the most important medieval sites in Poland. It is prot…
Churches & monasteries
Kłodzko
Legend says it all began with a vision. Young Arnošt of Pardubice, a pupil at the Knights Hospitaller school in Kłodzko, saw the statue of the Virgin on the altar come to life and turn her back on him. He took it as a warning, went on to b…
Technical monuments
Ustroń
The Czantoria Chairlift in Ustroń (pronounced roughly "chan-TOR-yah" and "OOS-tron") is a year-round chairlift that carries you in 8–10 minutes up to the Stokłosica meadow (851 m / 2,792 ft) on the slopes of Wielka Czantoria in the Silesia…
Viewpoints
Solina
The Solina Gondola Lift is a modern cable car above Lake Solina in southeastern Poland, carrying visitors from Plasza station beside Solina Dam up to Jawor hill. From the cabins you look down on the dam, the lake's winding bays and the gre…