Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Sucha Beskidzka
Sucha Beskidzka Castle is nicknamed "Little Wawel" because its arcaded courtyard resembles the royal castle in Kraków. Over four centuries this Renaissance residence at the foot of Mount Jasień passed through several noble families, and in…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Krzeszów
The Basilica of the Assumption in Krzeszów (say "KSHEH-shoof") is the centerpiece of a former Cistercian abbey often called the "European Pearl of the Baroque." Hidden in a small village in the foothills of the Sudetes in Lower Silesia, it…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Nowy Sącz
At the base of the north tower is a door on which four town trumpeters signed their names in 1617 – today the inscription is known mainly from a drawing by the painter Stanisław Wyspiański. The Basilica of St Margaret in Nowy Sącz is the t…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Strzelno
For more than two hundred years nobody knew that the Baroque pillars of the basilica in Strzelno concealed Romanesque columns covered in carvings. They were discovered only in 1946 by Professor Zdzisław Kępiński — and turned out to be one…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Węgrów
The sacristy of the basilica in Węgrów holds a mirror that, according to legend, belonged to Master Twardowski, the Polish Faust, and in 1969 Lech Wałęsa was married at its altar. These stories alone would justify a stop on the way to Podl…
Hidden gemMuseums
Łódź
The Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź (say: WOODGE) is Europe's largest museum devoted to textiles, fashion and the textile industry. It occupies the White Factory, a grand 19th-century cotton mill built by industrialist Ludwik Geyer at 2…
Hidden gemMuseums
Wiślica
On the wall of one room a small haloed figure kneels beneath a Gothic inscription reading "Lord, have mercy on us". Scholars believe it portrays Jan Długosz – the great medieval chronicler who in 1460 paid for this house for the clergy of…
Hidden gemMuseums
Kraków
Jan Matejko, Poland's great painter of national history, bought this manor house in 1876 with money from the sale of his painting "Batory at Pskov" – mainly so that his often sickly children could breathe country air. In Krzesławice, now p…
Hidden gemMuseums
Wrocław
Under a grassy mound on Na Grobli Street lies a 19th-century underground reservoir that stored Wrocław's drinking water for more than a hundred years. Today it houses Hydropolis, Poland's only science centre devoted entirely to water, wher…
Hidden gemCaves
Ojców
In 2018 archaeologists found finger bones of a Neanderthal child in Ciemna Cave ("Dark Cave") dating back about 115,000 years – the oldest known human remains in Poland. The cave on Koronna Hill in Ojców National Park has the largest chamb…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Drohiczyn
In the 18th century the regional assemblies of the Podlasie nobility met beneath these vaults; during the Second World War the church was turned into a stable, and later into a shooting range. Today the Baroque Jesuit church above the Bug…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Radom
The two 72-metre towers of Radom Cathedral deliberately echo the taller tower of St Mary's Basilica in Kraków, and Józef Pius Dziekoński's whole design is a "younger sibling" of his St Michael and St Florian Cathedral in Warsaw's Praga dis…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Szczyrzyc
The Cistercians of Szczyrzyc have been praying, farming and – with interruptions – brewing beer for nearly eight centuries. Szczyrzyc Abbey is the only monastery of the order on Polish soil that has operated without a break since the Middl…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Klimontów
Grand Chancellor of the Crown Jerzy Ossoliński saw how churches were being built in Rome and wanted one of his own in the small town of Klimontów near Sandomierz. The result is St Joseph's Collegiate Church, with a rare elliptical nave sur…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Kruszwica
On the eastern shore of Lake Gopło stands a church that may have been a cathedral in the 12th century — before the bishops moved their seat to Włocławek. The Collegiate Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Kruszwica, built in 1120–1140, is o…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Brzeg
Much of the high altar in this church is painted – the columns, cornices and scenes in the chancel are an illusion created by a Jesuit's brush. The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Brzeg is a former Jesuit church whose vault a…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Kraków
The entire nave vault springs from a single column in the middle of the church and spreads overhead like the crown of a tree. The Church of the Holy Cross, next to the Słowacki Theatre, is one of the purest Gothic buildings in Kraków, and…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Przemyśl
In one of the frescoes in the nave, the army of the Prince of Transylvania besieges Przemyśl, and the town is saved through the intercession of St Vincent, whose relics the Franciscans here have kept since the 16th century. The Church of S…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Grodków
Above the early-Gothic chancel of Grodków's parish church lies a puzzle: when it was raised to the height of the nave in the late Middle Ages, the builders did not take down the old vault but simply built an unfinished upper storey above i…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Paczków
St. John the Evangelist's Church in Paczków (say “PATCH-koof”) is a Gothic church that was turned into a fortress in the 16th century, and it still looks the part: a brick hall crowned by a white Renaissance parapet with swallowtail merlon…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Białystok
In the Wysoki Stoczek district of Białystok stands a church that looks Baroque but is only a little over thirty years old. The Church of the Lord's Resurrection was built in 1991–1996 as an echo of a lost church in Berezwecz, in what is no…
Hidden gemMuseums
Radzionków
The collection includes so-called bread money – currency that, in times of crisis, could only be used to buy bread. It is one of hundreds of curiosities gathered by a single enthusiast. The Bread Museum in Radzionków (today the Museum of B…
Hidden gemMuseums
Sulejówek
The Józef Piłsudski Museum in Sulejówek (say "soo-leh-YOO-vek") is a striking modern museum and a historic family home on the eastern edge of Warsaw. It tells the life story of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the founding father of independent Po…
Hidden gemMuseums
Kościerzyna
In a locomotive shed from 1929 and on the tracks around it stands the largest collection of rail vehicles in northern Poland – about 45 items of rolling stock, from a 1915 steam engine to the prototype of a Polish diesel locomotive. The Ko…