Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Brzeg
Brzeg Town Hall (say "BZHEG") is one of the finest Renaissance town halls in Poland and, together with the Piast castle a few streets away, the reason to stop in this small Silesian town on the Oder. Built in 1569-1577 by the Italian maste…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Różanystok
The Różanystok Sanctuary (say “roo-ZHAH-nee-stok”) is a late-Baroque minor basilica and one of the main Catholic pilgrimage sites in Podlasie, Poland's quiet north-eastern corner near the borders with Belarus and Lithuania. Its twin-towere…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Gdańsk
Mariacka Street (St Mary's Street) in Gdańsk is the most atmospheric lane in the Main Town: cobbled, car-free and lined with stone terraces, gargoyle drainpipes and amber workshops. It runs about 185 m from St Mary's Basilica down to St Ma…
Hidden gemNature
Sandomierz
Queen Jadwiga’s Ravine (Wąwóz Królowej Jadwigi, roughly “VON-voos kroo-LOH-vey yad-VEE-gee”) in Sandomierz is the town’s largest loess ravine: a sunken green corridor about half a kilometer long, with earthen walls several stories high and…
Hidden gemWaterfalls
Przesieka
In 2007 this waterfall came close to losing most of its water to a small hydroelectric plant. Today Podgórna Falls in Przesieka still roars into its granite pool and is the third-highest waterfall in the Polish part of the Giant Mountains…
Hidden gemLakes
Kamień Pomorski
From the waterfront in Kamień Pomorski you look out over flat water, reed beds and a green island – and in the shallows off that island lies a granite giant carried here from Sweden by an ice sheet. Kamień Lagoon (Zalew Kamieński) is a wid…
Hidden gemCastles
Wałbrzych
For most of the 20th century Old Książ (Stary Książ) was thought to be a sham ruin – a folly invented for the Hochberg family's romantic park. Only archaeological research in the 1990s confirmed that beneath the 18th-century "stage set" li…
Hidden gemLakes
gmina Warta
In summer the water level at Jeziorsko can drop by as much as 5.5 metres, exposing wide muddy shallows in the southern part of the reservoir. For people that is a drawback; for birds it is a feeding ground. More than 250 species have been…
Other
Kraków
Céline Dion, the Scorpions, Krzysztof Krawczyk and the TV detective Lieutenant Borewicz all share the same stretch of riverside path below Wawel Hill. Kraków's Avenue of Stars (Aleja Gwiazd) is a row of brass stars set into the paving of t…
Churches & monasteries
Bielsk Podlaski
The oldest painting in the Bielsk basilica is a century and a half older than the church itself: a Crucifixion of 1622, painted as a memorial to Hanna Kadłubowska, wife of the local scribe Stanisław Kulesza. The Church of the Nativity of M…
Churches & monasteries
Katowice
Panewniki Basilica – officially the Basilica of St. Louis the King and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – is a Neo-Romanesque Franciscan church in Katowice, southern Poland, best known for one of the largest moving nativity scenes…
Landmarks
Białystok
On busy Jana Pawła II Avenue, at No. 62, stands a small Neoclassical rotunda with a domed roof and a columned portico that locals call Napoleon's House (Domek Napoleona). The name comes from a romantic legend – in reality it was a customs…
Technical monuments
Radków
The Road of a Hundred Bends (Droga Stu Zakrętów, roughly "DRO-gah stoo zah-KREN-toof") is the most scenic stretch of regional road 387 in the Table Mountains of southwestern Poland. Running about 23 km from Radków through Karłów and the Li…
Churches & monasteries
Racibórz
The Castle Chapel of St. Thomas Becket in Racibórz (rah-CHEE-boosh) is the Gothic jewel of the town's Piast Castle, often called the "pearl of Silesian Gothic" and the "Silesian Sainte-Chapelle." Built in the late 13th century and dedicate…
Churches & monasteries
Siedlce
The two brick towers of Siedlce Cathedral are 75 m high and the tallest structure in town, visible from far across the flat landscape of eastern Mazovia. The Neo-Gothic Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1906–1912 and became…
Monuments & mounds
Warszawa
This 31-metre hill in Czerniaków was piled up from the rubble of destroyed Warsaw, and for years maps simply called it "Rubbish Hill". Today the Warsaw Uprising Mound (Kopiec Powstania Warszawskiego), crowned by a giant Fighting Poland anc…
Churches & monasteries
Racibórz
The Dominican friary that stood beside Racibórz's market square for almost six centuries is gone; only its church survives. St James's Church, in the north-eastern corner of the square, burned at least four times, yet it kept its medieval…
Churches & monasteries
Siemiatycze
On the chancel vault you can still see the Lis (Fox) coat of arms of the Sapieha family, who built this church in the 17th century. The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Siemiatycze is the town's oldest and most valuable monum…
Other
Żywiec
Żywiec's Castle Park covers 26 hectares of historic greenery around the Old Castle and the Habsburg palace, a few minutes' walk from the Market Square. More than 5,000 old trees grow here, and by the canal stands the 18th-century Chinese H…
Other
Kraków
Just a few steps from the bustle of the Main Market Square lies St Mary's Square – an intimate square around St Mary's Basilica where, until the early 19th century, the dead were buried. Pale paving now marks the area of the old cemetery,…
Old towns & squares
Szczecin
Rynek Sienny – the Hay Market (roughly "RIH-nek SHYEN-nih") – is the oldest market square in Szczecin and the heart of its rebuilt Old Town. The square is dominated by the brick Gothic Old Town Hall with its lacy, stepped gable, and surrou…
Churches & monasteries
Wasilków
The Święta Woda Sanctuary (roughly "SHVYEN-tah VOH-dah", meaning "Holy Water") in Wasilków, just north of Białystok in northeastern Poland, is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the Podlasie region. A white church of Our Lady of S…
Churches & monasteries
Poznań
The Cathedral Lock is a nearly 200-year-old piece of the Prussian Poznań Fortress on the River Cybina, right next to Ostrów Tumski, the cathedral island. This former fortified weir, now linked by a glass footbridge to the Gate of Poznań he…
Historic sites
Łódź
The Old Cemetery in Łódź (Stary Cmentarz, pronounced "STAH-ry TSMEN-tash"; Łódź sounds roughly like "woodge") is the city's oldest surviving burial ground and one of the most striking monuments of its industrial past. On about 21 hectares,…