Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Lanckorona
In 1869 a fire destroyed 79 houses around Lanckorona's market square. The wooden house that has been home to the Professor Antoni Krajewski Museum since 1967 is the only building on the square that survived it. The house itself is the most…
Museums
Muszyna
The "Muszyna State" Regional Museum began in 1958 with keepsakes that local people brought to an old inn below the castle hill. Today it occupies a rebuilt copy of a former 18th-century inn at Krzywa 1 and tells the story of the bishops' "…
Museums
Nowy Sącz
The museum in Nowy Sącz has a history worthy of a novel: its collections went on show for the first time in 1938 in the rebuilt castle, and in January 1945 an exploding ammunition dump reduced the castle – and the exhibits – to rubble. Onl…
Museums
Wieliczka
The Kraków Saltworks Museum in Wieliczka (Muzeum Żup Krakowskich) tells the story of the royal salt company that ran the mines of Wieliczka and Bochnia for centuries. It has two homes: the medieval Saltworks Castle in town and a large unde…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Tyniec Abbey (pronounced "TIN-yets") is a Benedictine monastery perched on a white limestone cliff above the Vistula River, within the city limits of Kraków, and one of the oldest abbeys in Poland. Tradition dates its founding to 1044, and…
Historic sites
Kraków
The National Pantheon in Kraków occupies the brick crypts of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul at 52a Grodzka Street, halfway between the Main Square and Wawel Hill. Since 2012 it has been the resting place of outstanding figures of Poli…
Thermal baths & water parks
Kraków
The Kraków Water Park (Park Wodny, say "PARK VOD-nee") is the city's big indoor aquapark, open since 2000 in the Mistrzejowice district, about 2.5 km north of the Main Market Square. Under a striking timber roof you'll find pools, a lazy r…
Other
Krynica-Zdrój
The Main Pump Room in Krynica-Zdrój (KRIH-nee-tsah ZDROOY) is a glass-walled modernist pavilion on the spa town's promenade where visitors have been drinking mineral water straight from the taps since 1971. It is the social heart of one of…
Museums
Kraków
The Rynek Underground (Podziemia Rynku, "pod-ZHEM-ya RIH-neh-koo") in Kraków is a museum hidden beneath the city's Main Market Square, one of the largest medieval squares in Europe. Below the cobbles around the Cloth Hall, archaeologists u…
Museums
Olkusz
A few metres below the paving of Olkusz Market Square lie the cellars of a town hall that has not stood above ground for two hundred years. Underground Olkusz (Podziemny Olkusz) is a pair of underground exhibitions – one beneath the remain…
Museums
Kraków
The Polonia Wax Museum at ul. Floriańska 32, on the route between the Main Market Square and St Florian's Gate, displays wax figures of politicians, clergy, athletes, actors and fictional characters. It has earned an unusual reputation: ma…
Churches & monasteries
Kraków
Above the Łagiewniki district rises a white, elliptical building shaped like a boat, with a slender tower topped by a cross beside it. This is the Basilica of Divine Mercy, the newest part of a shrine that pilgrims from around the world ca…
Churches & monasteries
Ślemień
The story of Jasna Górka begins with a miracle that – as the parish itself admits – someone decided to "make". According to tradition, in the mid-14th century a highlander from Ślemień, back from a pilgrimage to Częstochowa, dipped a holy…
Churches & monasteries
Limanowa
The stone basilica with its 60-metre tower dominates the centre of Limanowa and is the main Marian shrine of the Island Beskids. Its altar holds a 14th-century Pietà carved from limewood, crowned in 1966 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, and the…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Our Lady of Fatima Sanctuary at Krzeptówki (kshep-TOOF-kee) in Zakopane is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Tatra region and a church closely tied to Pope John Paul II. Local highlanders built it as a thank-offering af…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
On 13 May 1950, a group of lay people who had just finished a retreat in Trzebinia decided not to go home but to spend the whole night praying in front of a grotto. This was the first of the Fatima vigils for which the Basilica of the Sacr…
Churches & monasteries
Maków Podhalański
Above Maków Podhalański, a small town on the Skawa river in the Maków Beskids, rises the Church of the Transfiguration – the shrine of Our Lady of Maków, venerated as Guardian and Queen of Families. The main altar holds a 16th-century pain…
Churches & monasteries
Trzebinia
Miners have made pilgrimages to Płoki since the Middle Ages – hence the unusual title of its Madonna: Our Lady, Patroness of Working Families. The high altar of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary holds a 15th-century image of th…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
Drive into Zakopane from the Olcza side and you will see a church whose roof is made up of five segments of unequal height. From the side they look like hands joined in prayer, and at the same time like steep highland roofs and Tatra peaks…
Churches & monasteries
Brzesko
Szczepanów, a village a few kilometres from Brzesko, is by tradition the birthplace of St Stanislaus of Szczepanów, Bishop of Kraków and patron saint of Poland. The brick neo-Gothic basilica with its tall tower encloses a Gothic church fro…
Churches & monasteries
Czerna
Above the church portal in Czerna is a Latin inscription praising blessed solitude, and it sums up the place well. For almost two centuries the Discalced Carmelite monastery in the Eliaszówka Valley was a hermitage closed to lay people. To…
Churches & monasteries
Zakopane
The Old Church in Zakopane (Stary Kościół, pronounced roughly "STAH-ri KOSH-choow"), officially the Church of Our Lady of Częstochowa, is the oldest parish church in Poland's best-known mountain resort. This small wooden church on Kościeli…
Thermal baths & water parks
Białka Tatrzańska
Terma Bania in Białka Tatrzańska (roughly "BYAW-kah tah-TZHAN-skah") is one of the busiest thermal water parks in the Polish Tatra foothills. It sits at the foot of the Kotelnica Białczańska ski slopes and offers 15 pools, more than 300 m…
Thermal baths & water parks
Bukowina Tatrzańska
The water you swim in at Bukowina Tatrzańska fell as rain on the forested lower slopes of the Tatras around 10,000 years ago. For millennia it seeped through the rock until a borehole 2,400 m deep brought it to the surface at 67°C. Termy B…