Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
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…
Museums
Zamość
The Armenian Houses on the Great Market Square in Zamość (say "ZAH-moshch") are the most colorful row of buildings in this UNESCO-listed Renaissance town, and they are home to the Zamość Museum. Built in the 17th century for wealthy Armeni…
Museums
Wdzydze Kiszewskie
On the shore of Lake Gołuń in Wdzydze Kiszewskie stands the oldest open-air museum on Polish soil. It began in 1906 with a single cottage bought by a village teacher and a painter. Today it covers 22 hectares and holds more than 50 buildin…
Museums
Gliwice
Kolejkowo Gliwice (roughly "ko-lay-KO-vo") is a huge model railway and miniature world inside the Europa Centralna shopping mall in Gliwice, in Poland's Upper Silesia region. Trains wind past tiny versions of real Silesian landmarks, thous…
Museums
Kołobrzeg
The Kołobrzeg Maritime Open-Air Museum (Kołobrzeski Skansen Morski) is an outdoor branch of the Museum of Polish Arms in the town's fishing port. Its stars are two Polish Navy warships standing on dry land that you can climb aboard, along…
Museums
Miasteczko Śląskie
At around 2 p.m. on 17 June 1917, a roar echoed through the Bibiela mine and a torrent of water burst into the workings. The miners managed to escape, but within two hours the entire mine – machinery and equipment included – was under wate…
Museums
Stary Wiśnicz
In a wooden manor at the foot of Wiśnicz Castle, Jan Matejko spent his engagement, took holidays with his family and drew a little town whose wooden houses no one will ever see again. Decades later, during the Second World War, the same ho…
Museums
Warszawa
On the edge of the Vistula escarpment in Mokotów stands a white domed palace modelled on Palladio's Villa Rotonda. Królikarnia is now the Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture, a branch of the National Museum in Warsaw, and around it lies…
Museums
Kłóbka
In Kłóbka, nicknamed the Pearl of Kuyavia for its hills, woods and lakes, stands the manor house where Maria Wodzińska (later Orpiszewska) spent the last years of her life; she was the only official fiancée of Fryderyk Chopin. Around the m…
Museums
Nowy Sącz
The Galician Town in Nowy Sącz (Miasteczko Galicyjskie; say NOH-vee SONCH) is an open-air museum that recreates a small market town of Austrian-ruled Galicia around 1900, complete with a cobbled square, a town hall, timber houses and craft…
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
Wiślica
For half a century a shallow gypsum hollow 4.2 metres across was treated as proof that Christianity reached Wiślica almost a hundred years before the baptism of Poland's first ruler, Mieszko I, in 966. Today it is known as one of the most…
Museums
Toruń
Młyn Wiedzy (say "mwin VYED-zih," meaning "Mill of Knowledge") is Toruń's hands-on science center, set inside the restored red-brick Richter Mills on ul. Łokietka. Instead of glass cases, you get exhibits to spin, push and experiment with,…
Museums
Kraków
MOCAK, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (say "MO-tsak"), is the city's leading venue for art of recent decades. It stands in Zabłocie, a former industrial area across the Vistula, on the grounds of Oskar Schindler's wartime enamel…
Museums
Trzęsacz
Fifty metres from the most famous ruin on the Polish coast, on Klifowa Street in Trzęsacz, stands the Władysław Jagiełło Multimedia Museum of Trzęsacz, also known as MuzeON. Instead of display cases it has four rooms of images, light and s…
Museums
Włodawa
The Synagogue Complex Museum in Włodawa (say vwo-DAH-vah) is a unique group of three former Jewish community buildings in eastern Poland. Its centerpiece is the 18th-century Great Synagogue, where a neo-Baroque Torah ark with polychrome de…
Museums
Częstochowa
Among silver votive offerings, robes for the Miraculous Icon and 17th-century portraits of monks lies an object straight from a church-fair stall: a big red ballpoint pen with a postcard of Pope John Paul II inside. On 31 August 1980 Lech…
Museums
Olkusz
In the centre of Olkusz, in an outbuilding of the former hospital at 32 Szpitalna Street, sits a remarkable collection of art and everyday objects from West and Central Africa. The African Museum was founded in 1971 on a gift from a local…
Museums
Rudno
Right below the ruins of Tenczyn Castle, on the volcanic hill of Spalisko (about 400 m above sea level), collector Witold Koprucha opened the private Agate Museum in 2020. The key specimens all come from the immediate area: fields and debr…
Museums
Poznań
The Archaeological Museum in Poznań is housed in the Renaissance Górka Palace (Pałac Górków, say "PAH-wats GOOR-koof") at Wodna 27, a block south of the Old Market Square. Founded in 1857, it is one of Poland's oldest archaeological museum…
Museums
Elbląg
The Archaeological and Historical Museum in Elbląg (say "EL-blonk") is the city's main museum and one of the most rewarding archaeology museums in northern Poland. Housed in two historic buildings on the riverside grounds of the former Teu…
Museums
Kraków
The Archdiocesan Museum in Kraków, named after Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, occupies two historic townhouses on Kanonicza Street, right below Wawel Castle. It combines a fine collection of sacred art from churches across the Archdiocese of Krak…
Museums
Gniezno
The Archdiocesan Museum in Gniezno (Muzeum Archidiecezji Gnieźnieńskiej) holds the treasury of Gniezno Cathedral, one of the oldest and richest church collections in Poland. In a building just behind the cathedral on Lech Hill you can see…
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…