Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Zoos
Kraków
Kraków Zoo is not in a city park but on Pustelnik Hill in the middle of Wolski Forest, about 8 km from the Main Market Square. Its 20 hectares are home to around 1,500 animals from more than 270 species, over a hundred of them classed as e…
Churches & monasteries
Poznań
The Poznań Fara (parish church, pronounced FAH-rah), formally the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Stanislaus, is one of the finest Baroque churches in Poland. It stands on Gołębia Street, a two-minute wal…
Churches & monasteries
Jawor
The Church of Peace in Jawor (pronounced YAH-vor) is a vast half-timbered Lutheran church built in 1654–1655 in the small Silesian town of Jawor, southwest Poland. Plain as a barn from outside, it hides a dazzling interior of painted galle…
Churches & monasteries
Supraśl
The white walls by the River Supraśl hide one of the most important centres of Orthodox Christianity in Poland, and a history that has changed direction several times. The Monastery of the Annunciation was founded by the Lithuanian marshal…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
From Miodowa Street, the Tempel looks like an elegant town house with a triangular gable. Inside, visitors find a colourful, gilded hall in the Moorish style, quite unlike the austere Renaissance synagogues of Kazimierz. This Progressive s…
Fortifications
Osowiec-Twierdza
The Russians built this fortress at a point where the belt of Biebrza marshes narrows. The railway from Białystok to Ełk and on to Königsberg ran through this gap. The wetlands worked as a natural moat, and the forts sealed the only dry ro…
Landmarks
Łódź
Behind a red-brick wall in the Bałuty district lies a forest of matzevot (Jewish headstones), mausoleums and old trees. The Jewish Cemetery on Bracka Street opened in 1892 and is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. It covers ab…
Churches & monasteries
Kudowa-Zdrój
From the outside it is a small Baroque chapel between a church and a bell tower in Czermna. Inside, the walls and vault are covered with about 3,000 closely packed skulls and bones. In total, the Skull Chapel and the crypt beneath its floo…
Churches & monasteries
Przemyśl
Przemyśl's archcathedral looks like a Baroque church, but beneath its floor lie the walls of a much older one. In the crypts, opened to visitors in 2014, you can see the foundations of the Romanesque rotunda of St Nicholas from the 12th ce…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Behind a gate with a Hebrew inscription on Szeroka Street lies a small white prayer hall measuring just 10.4 by 5.1 metres. The Remuh Synagogue is the second-oldest synagogue in Kraków and the only one in the city where services are held r…
Mountains & peaks
Sromowce Niżne
Trzy Korony (say "tshih koh-ROH-nih"), meaning "Three Crowns," is the most famous peak of the Pieniny Mountains on the Polish–Slovak border. From the railed viewing platform on its highest crag, Okrąglica (982 m / 3,222 ft), you look strai…
Landmarks
Zakopane
The landowner Zygmunt Gnatowski wanted to build an ordinary highlander's cottage in Zakopane to house his ethnographic collection. Stanisław Witkiewicz talked him into something new. The result, built in 1892–1893, was Villa Koliba, the fi…
Castles
Bolków
On the side facing the Nysa Szalona river, Castle Hill drops away in a 90-metre slope, while to the east it slopes gently down into the town. On top, at 396 metres above sea level, stands Bolków Castle – one of the largest strongholds of t…
Castles
Baranów Sandomierski
In the late 19th century Sławomir Odrzywolski, the first to survey the castle in detail, wrote that it could "boldly stand beside Wawel Castle". That remark gave it the nickname "Little Wawel". The Leszczyński family residence was built in…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Żywiec
Poland's best-known beer label — a couple dancing the Krakowiak folk dance — was created in 1956 with Americans in mind. A Polish emigrant who wanted to sell Żywiec beer in the USA insisted on the traditional Kraków costumes, because they…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Dębno Podhalańskie
The wooden church in Dębno (say "DEMB-no") is St. Michael the Archangel's Church, a late-Gothic log church in the Podhale highlands of southern Poland and one of the best-preserved medieval wooden churches anywhere in Europe. Part of the U…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Sandomierz
From the outside, Sandomierz Cathedral shows a Baroque façade and brick facing from the 19th century. Its greatest treasure is in the chancel, though: Byzantine-Ruthenian wall paintings from the first half of the 15th century. Paintings in…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Święta Katarzyna
For decades hikers posed by the cross on Łysica's western summit, convinced they were standing on the highest point of the Holy Cross Mountains (Góry Świętokrzyskie). Measurements in 2018, however, showed that a rocky ridge a few hundred m…
Hidden gemMuseums
Duszniki-Zdrój
Lower Silesia once had around 100 paper mills. Only one survived — in the spa town of Duszniki-Zdrój, on the Bystrzyca Dusznicka river. Since 1968 it has housed the Museum of Papermaking, and handmade paper is still produced in its vat roo…
Hidden gemHistoric sites
Lednogóra
Ostrów Lednicki (roughly "OS-troof led-NEE-tskee") is a small island on Lake Lednica in western Poland where the story of the Polish state begins. In the 960s the first historical ruler of Poland, Duke Mieszko I, kept a fortified residence…
Hidden gemPalaces
Kozłówka
Kozłówka Palace (say "kozh-WOOF-kah") is a Baroque residence of the aristocratic Zamoyski family about 40 km north of Lublin in eastern Poland. Today it houses the Zamoyski Museum, whose interiors from around 1900 survive almost complete,…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Trzęsacz
When the brick Church of St Nicholas was built in Trzęsacz around 1400, it stood in the middle of the village, about 1.8–2 km from the sea. Over the following centuries the Baltic undercut the cliff and took the land metre by metre. Today…
Hidden gemTechnical monuments
Wisła
The first jump on the new hill in Wisła-Malinka was made on 17 September 2008 by Adam Małysz himself — a few metres past the K-point, although it was not officially measured. Less than two weeks later, at the Polish Championships that open…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Szczyrk
Skrzyczne (1,257 m) is the highest peak of the Silesian Beskids and one of the summits of the Crown of Polish Mountains, a list of the highest points of Poland's mountain ranges. Above the Żywiec Basin it rises as a single, almost 800-metr…