Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Monuments & mounds
Czerniejewo
By the old forest road known as the Leśniewo Track stands a white obelisk with a cross, and its base records the exact time of death: 12 noon, 30 December 1912. This is where Count Witold Skórzewski was killed in a hunting accident – a dip…
Other
Kórnik
The Kórnik Promenade (Kórnik is pronounced roughly "KOOR-neek") is a lakeside walking and cycling path along Lake Kórnik, a small town about 20 km southeast of Poznań in western Poland. Named after the Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szym…
Viewpoints
Żerków
For years, visitors who came to the hill above Brzóstków in summer mostly saw maize. In 2019 the Żerków municipality, together with the State Forests, built a viewing platform here, restoring the view over the Warta glacial valley and the…
Landmarks
Krotoszyn
Above Krotoszyn's market square rises a tower crowned by a baroque cupola with two lanterns, carrying a clock from 1897. The town hall was built in 1689, burned in a great town fire, came back in baroque form and at the end of the 19th cen…
Landmarks
Leszno
Leszno Town Hall (Leszno is pronounced roughly "LESH-no") stands in the middle of the market square of this small city in western Poland. With its tall clock tower and pale classical façades, it is the town's best-known landmark – a buildi…
Landmarks
Poznań
Poznań Town Hall (Ratusz, say "RAH-toosh") on the Old Market Square is one of the finest Renaissance town halls in Central Europe and the symbol of the city. Every day at noon two mechanical billy goats pop out above the clock and butt hea…
Landmarks
Zduny
The low, white town hall with a red roof and a little clock tower stands in the middle of the market square of the former town of Zduny Niemieckie ("German Zduny"). It was built in 1684, funded by Rafał Leszczyński, governor (voivode) of K…
Museums
Poznań
Ulica ks. Posadzego on Poznań's Ostrów Tumski runs along the crest of a stronghold rampart from the time of Mieszko I, Poland's first historical ruler: its structure begins about a metre below the cobbles and reaches almost six metres down…
Nature
Czernice
Jezioro Czarne ("Black Lake") is slowly ceasing to be a lake. Its dark, acidic water is being overgrown from the shores, and carnivorous plants and rare mosses grow on the floating mat of the bog. This process is protected by one of the ol…
Nature
Kamińsko
The Jezioro Pławno Nature Reserve protects two small forest lakes in the western part of Puszcza Zielonka forest north-east of Poznań – Pławno and Kociołek – together with the bogs and patches of woodland around them. There is no beach and…
Nature
Poznań
Between the housing blocks of Piątkowo and the new estates of Naramowice lies the small Piątkowo Wood, and inside it one of the smallest nature reserves in Poznań. Żurawiniec covers just 1.67 ha and protects a peat bog in a glacial trough.…
Nature
Łopuchówko
Nine-leaved toothwort is a plant of mountain beech forests, usually found in the Carpathians and the Sudetes. Yet in Zielonka Forest, a short drive from Poznań, it grows at its northernmost site in Poland – and the only documented one in t…
Nature
Uchorowo
Śnieżycowy Jar (roughly "shnyeh-ZHY-tso-vy yar"), the Snowflake Ravine Nature Reserve, is a small wooded gully about 15 miles north of Poznań, in western Poland, where thousands of spring snowflakes bloom each March. It is one of the few l…
Landscape parks
Rogalin
Rogalin Landscape Park (Rogaliński Park Krajobrazowy; Rogalin is pronounced "ro-GAH-leen") protects a stretch of the Warta River valley about 12 miles south of Poznań, in western Poland. It is famous for one of Europe's largest groups of c…
Nature
Rogalin
The Rogalin oaks (Rogalin: roh-GAH-leen) are Europe's largest cluster of ancient pedunculate oaks, growing beside the Warta River in the village of Rogalin, about 20 km (12 miles) south of Poznań in western Poland. Three giants named Lech,…
Museums
Poznań
The Croissant Museum in Poznań (Rogalowe Muzeum Poznania, roughly "ro-GAH-lo-veh moo-ZEH-oom") is a lively, hands-on show rather than a museum of display cases. Right on the Old Market Square, costumed hosts teach you how Poznań's famous S…
Old towns & squares
Gniezno
Gniezno Market Square (Rynek, say "RIH-nek") is the heart of the old town in Gniezno, a small, friendly square lined with pastel townhouses, from which cobbled Tumska Street runs straight up to the cathedral on Lech Hill. Rebuilt after a g…
Old towns & squares
Pyzdry
In 1383, during the siege of Pyzdry by the troops of Duke Siemowit IV of Masovia, chroniclers recorded the first use of a cannon on Polish soil. Since January 2024 a sculpture of three medieval gunners with their cannon has commemorated th…
Churches & monasteries
Rataje
Górka Klasztorna near Łobżenica is regarded as the oldest Marian sanctuary in Poland. According to tradition, in 1079 the Virgin Mary with the Child appeared here to a shepherd at a well in the Górka Grove. Today it is a complex with a bar…
Churches & monasteries
Licheń Stary
The golden dome of Licheń is visible from far across the flat plain near Konin, and the basilica tower rises to 141.5 m. The Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń is now the largest church in Poland, yet the sanctuary began with a small picture h…
Churches & monasteries
Dąbrówka Kościelna
The Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Dąbrówka Kościelna (roughly "dom-BROOF-kah kosh-CHEL-nah") is a Marian pilgrimage church in the countryside of Greater Poland. It sits on a hill above a small village between Poznań and Gniezno, Pol…
Churches & monasteries
Piaski
A copy of Venice's Santa Maria della Salute rises above the fields of Greater Poland near Gostyń. Its dome is 17 m wide and 50 m high, and it is regarded as the largest dome in Poland. Strictly speaking, the basilica and the Oratorian mona…
Churches & monasteries
Kalisz
On 29 April 1945, Polish priests imprisoned in Dachau expected to be executed – instead, they lived to see liberation. Believing they owed their survival to St Joseph, more than 300 priests came to his image in Kalisz on a pilgrimage of th…
Museums
Pobiedziska
The Piast Trail Miniature Park in Pobiedziska (say "poh-byeh-JEE-skah") lets you walk past Greater Poland's greatest landmarks in under an hour. Its 37 outdoor models at 1:20 scale range from Gniezno Cathedral and Poznań's Old Market Squar…