Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Russów
The open-air museum in Russów consists of six wooden buildings from the Kalisz countryside, set in the 4-hectare park around Maria Dąbrowska's manor house. The most valuable is the "sołek" – a granary from the second half of the 18th centu…
Museums
Jarocin
The Polish Rock Granary is a museum where loudspeakers replace silence. Spread over two floors of a former grain store in the centre of Jarocin, it tells the story of Polish rock music from the 1950s to the present day, built around the fe…
Technical monuments
Środa Wielkopolska
The Środa County Railway (Średzka Kolej Powiatowa; Środa is pronounced "SHROH-dah") is a heritage narrow-gauge line running about 9 miles between Środa Wielkopolska and Zaniemyśl, roughly 22 miles southeast of Poznań in western Poland. On…
Zoos
Poznań
Poznań's zoo began as a birthday joke. In 1871 the regulars of a restaurant by the railway station, members of a skittles club, decided to celebrate their president's fiftieth birthday by giving him… animals. From a goat, a sheep, a peacoc…
Technical monuments
Poznań
Stary Browar ("STAH-ri BRO-var," the Old Brewery) in Poznań is a shopping, arts and business center at Półwiejska 42, built inside the red-brick halls of the 19th-century Hugger brewery. Its "50:50" concept, half business and half art, tur…
Old towns & squares
Poznań
Poznań's Old Market Square (Stary Rynek, say "STAH-ri RIN-ek") is the historic heart of one of Poland's oldest cities and among the most colorful squares in Central Europe. A Renaissance town hall with mechanical goats, a row of painted me…
Nature
Pobiedziska
A short drive from Poznań you can paddle through five lakes, a narrow stream and belts of reeds without meeting a single weir. The Puszcza Zielonka kayak trail is 11.3 km long and links Pobiedziska with Tuczno. The current is so gentle tha…
Landmarks
Wierzenica
The Trail of Wooden Churches around Zielonka Forest (Szlak kościołów drewnianych wokół Puszczy Zielonka) is a signposted driving route that links 12 wooden village churches just northeast of Poznań in western Poland. Built between the 16th…
Other
Wągrowiec
Every day at noon and after dark, Wągrowiec's market square turns into a small stage: the water in the fountain dances to music, and in the evening coloured lights join in. The dancing fountain was built during the revitalisation of the sq…
Nature
Mieleszyn
In the middle of the fields at Sokolniki near Gniezno lies a boulder that, according to local legend, was meant to crush a church under construction. The Mieleszyn municipality calls it the area's greatest curiosity: Tarcza Olbrzyma – the…
Thermal baths & water parks
Poznań
Termy Maltańskie in Poznań (roughly TER-mih mahl-TAHN-skyeh, POZ-nahn) is one of Poland's largest swimming complexes: a water park, a sauna area and Olympic-standard sports pools on the north shore of Lake Malta. Some pools are fed with ge…
Greater Poland
Poznań
The Wartostrada is a network of paved walking and cycling paths along both banks of the Warta River, letting you cross Poznań by the water, away from the streets. The whole route along the Warta and Cybina rivers is about 14 km long and ru…
Technical monuments
Pyzdry
In 2021 the brick windmill in Pyzdry won Poland's national “Well-Kept Monument” competition in the industrial heritage category. Only a few years earlier this tower mill of 1903 on Wrocławska street was still in private hands. Today it bel…
Technical monuments
Krzywiń
On Bojanowskiego Street, on the way out of Krzywiń towards Gryżyna, stands a restored wooden post mill with dark cladding and lattice sails. It is one of two windmills that survive within the town limits. In 1793 there were three working h…
Technical monuments
Rybitwy
This lone wooden post mill in the fields on the western shore of Lake Lednica was already at work in the 19th century, and today it belongs to the museum that looks after the cradle of the Piast state. Rybitwy Windmill has no ticket office…
Technical monuments
Moraczewo
Three wooden post mills on a gentle hill beside the Poznań–Gniezno road look as if they had always stood here – in fact, each one came from a different village. The Moraczewo Windmills are an outdoor site of the Museum of the First Piasts…
National parks
Jeziory
Wielkopolski National Park (Greater Poland National Park; say "vyel-ko-POL-skee") is a free-to-enter landscape of forests, glacial lakes and wooded hills just 15 km south of Poznań, one of western Poland's biggest cities. It is the easiest…
Viewpoints
Czerwonak
On the summit of Dziewicza Góra, the highest point of the Puszcza Zielonka forest and of the whole Poznań district (144.9 m above sea level), stands a white reinforced-concrete tower whose everyday job is watching the forest for fires. Cli…
Viewpoints
Poznań
On the border of Świerczewo and Fabianowo-Kotowo, above former clay pits in the Junikowo Stream valley, stands a 25-metre steel observation tower. Its deck is the best place to see how large Szachty park is: a patchwork of about 40 ponds,…
Viewpoints
Wolica Kozia
From below you see only pine trees; from the top, a green belt of riverside floodplain forest, oxbow lakes and the roofs of Hermanów across the valley. Wolica Kozia Observation Tower stands in the northern part of the village, beside one o…
Historic sites
Gniezno
Lech Hill in Gniezno (Wzgórze Lecha) is where Poland, quite literally, began. This low rise above a lake in west-central Poland held the stronghold of the early Piast dukes, the seat of the country's first archbishop and the cathedral wher…
Castles
Szamotuły
Behind the castle in Szamotuły stands a brick tower where, according to tradition, Halszka of Ostroh – a princess and granddaughter of King Sigismund the Old, forced to marry Łukasz III Górka – was held for 14 years. Górka Castle is now a…
Castles
Poznań
The Royal Castle in Poznań (roughly "POZ-nahn") crowns Przemysł Hill, a few minutes' walk from the Old Market Square in this western Polish city. It was the seat of Przemysł II, crowned King of Poland in 1295, and today houses the Museum o…
Castles
Sieraków
Of the great Opaliński residence on the Warta river, only the ground floor of one wing survived, used for years as an ice house. When richly decorated family sarcophagi were brought out of the crypt of Sieraków’s former Bernardine church i…