The "Historic sites" category covers 79 places where something important happened in the history of Poland and Europe: memorials and former camps, early Piast strongholds, battlefields and historic cemeteries.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oświęcim includes the former main camp, Auschwitz I, and Birkenau in Brzezinka, the largest part of the complex – both are UNESCO-listed. Entry is free but requires a named entry card booked online only. Other important memorials include the State Museum at Majdanek in Lublin and the Sobibór Memorial. Ostrów Lednicki tells a very different chapter of history – an island with the ruins of Mieszko I's palace and baptismal pools, the probable site of the Baptism of Poland. In Poznań, the multimedia Brama Poznania introduces the history of Ostrów Tumski. In Podlachia, the Bohoniki mizar is the largest existing Muslim cemetery in Poland, and in Ossów you will find the cemetery on the battlefield of the 1920 Battle of Warsaw.
Sites in this category are spread across the country: the most are in Greater Poland (about 10), followed by the Silesian region and Lesser Poland (a handful each).
In practice: allow one and a half to two and a half hours, and at least half a day for Auschwitz I and Birkenau together. Memorial sites are not suitable for young children – the Auschwitz museum does not recommend visits for children under 14. Many places are free or have a free day: Ostrów Lednicki on Wednesdays.
Historic sites
Oświęcim
Auschwitz I in Oświęcim (pronounced osh-VYEN-cheem), southern Poland, is the original camp of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and today the main site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Its brick…
Historic sites
Brzezinka
Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Brzezinka (pronounced bzheh-ZHEEN-kah), near Oświęcim in southern Poland, is the largest part of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and the place where most of its victims were…
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…
Historic sites
Poznań
Brama Poznania ("BRAH-mah poz-NAH-nyah," meaning Gate of Poznań) is an interactive heritage center telling the story of Ostrów Tumski, the river island where both Poznań and the early Polish state began. Instead of display cases, it uses s…
Historic sites
Bohoniki
The Muslim cemetery (mizar) in Bohoniki (bo-ho-NEE-kee) is the largest surviving mizar in Poland. It dates from the 18th century, covers about 2 hectares, and was declared a Polish Historic Monument in 2012. It lies in a pine forest in the…
Historic sites
Ossów
At Ossów, in August 1920, the fate of Warsaw hung in the balance. On the field where Polish soldiers – many of them only 16 to 18 years old – stopped the advance of the Red Army, there is now a cemetery with eight mass graves and the Chape…
Historic sites
Oświęcim
Auschwitz I in Oświęcim (pronounced osh-VYEN-cheem), southern Poland, is the original camp of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and today the main site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Its brick…
Historic sites
Brzezinka
Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Brzezinka (pronounced bzheh-ZHEEN-kah), near Oświęcim in southern Poland, is the largest part of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and the place where most of its victims were…
Historic sites
Poznań
Brama Poznania ("BRAH-mah poz-NAH-nyah," meaning Gate of Poznań) is an interactive heritage center telling the story of Ostrów Tumski, the river island where both Poznań and the early Polish state began. Instead of display cases, it uses s…
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…
Historic sites
Krynki
For decades films were shown here in the "Malwa" cinema, while bricked-up windows hid the old prayer hall. The Caucasian Synagogue in Krynki (the Kaukaski Beit Midrash) is a brick synagogue built around 1850 for Jewish tanners, a few steps…
Historic sites
Łódź
The Old Cemetery in Łódź (Stary Cmentarz, pronounced "STAH-ry TSMEN-tash"; Łódź sounds roughly like "woodge") is the city's oldest surviving burial ground and one of the most striking monuments of its industrial past. On about 21 hectares,…
Historic sites
Góra Świętej Anny
Stone terraces cut into a former limestone quarry were meant to hold 7,000 seated and 20,000 standing spectators. The amphitheatre on Góra Świętej Anny was built by the Nazis in the 1930s as a stage for propaganda rallies, with a mausoleum…
Historic sites
Warszawa
On the night of 19–20 August 1944 insurgents captured this building with the help of a fire pump: they forced thousands of litres of a crude oil and petrol mixture inside and set it alight. The PAST building at Zielna 39 is one of Europe's…
Historic sites
Łambinowice
On a former military training ground near Łambinowice – Lamsdorf in German – one camp followed another for more than seventy years: for French prisoners in 1870, for Entente soldiers in the First World War, and in the Second World War one…
Historic sites
Szczecin
Szczecin Central Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Poland and the third largest in Europe, after those in Hamburg and Manchester. Its more than 172 hectares (425 acres) form a vast landscaped park with tree-lined avenues, fountains, stre…
Historic sites
Palmiry
The Palmiry Cemetery and Museum - Memorial Site (Cmentarz i Muzeum - Miejsce Pamięci Palmiry) is one of the most important memorials to the victims of German terror in 1939-1943 near Warsaw. Deep in Kampinos National Park, in the Czosnów m…
Historic sites
Bohoniki
The Muslim cemetery (mizar) in Bohoniki (bo-ho-NEE-kee) is the largest surviving mizar in Poland. It dates from the 18th century, covers about 2 hectares, and was declared a Polish Historic Monument in 2012. It lies in a pine forest in the…
Historic sites
Ossów
At Ossów, in August 1920, the fate of Warsaw hung in the balance. On the field where Polish soldiers – many of them only 16 to 18 years old – stopped the advance of the Red Army, there is now a cemetery with eight mass graves and the Chape…
Historic sites
Bydlin
In the parish cemetery of Bydlin, at the foot of a hill crowned by castle ruins, stands a seven-metre sandstone cross. Beneath it, in a mass grave, lie 46 Polish Legionnaires killed at the Battle of Krzywopłoty in November 1914 — a clash J…
Historic sites
Brzesko
Behind a stone wall on ulica Czarnowiejska in Brzesko lie more than 500 soldiers from the First World War: Austrians, Germans and Russians buried side by side. Cemetery No. 276 is one of the burial grounds laid out by the Austro-Hungarian…
Historic sites
Poznań
The Cemetery of Distinguished Greater Poland Citizens (Cmentarz Zasłużonych Wielkopolan) on St. Adalbert's Hill is Poznań's oldest surviving cemetery and one of the most atmospheric corners of the city center. On a leafy slope of ivy, old…
Historic sites
Warszawa
The Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw (pronounced "oh-ko-POH-vah") is one of the largest Jewish burial grounds in Europe and one of the most moving places to visit in Poland's capital. Founded in 1806, it covers about 33 hectares…
Historic sites
Goniądz
On the southern edge of Goniądz, by the road to Downary, stone matzevot (Jewish gravestones) lie in the grass among young trees. This is the kirkut – the only place in town where you can still see a trace of the community that in the 19th…
Historic sites
Kazimierz Dolny
On a wooded ravine slope on Czerniawy Street, about 950 m south-east of the Market Square, lies the new Jewish cemetery of Kazimierz Dolny. Its best-known feature is the lapidarium – a wall made of several hundred fragments of matzevot, sp…
Historic sites
Lesko
The Lesko Jewish Cemetery ("LESS-ko") is one of the oldest and most important Jewish cemeteries in Poland. On a wooded hill a few hundred meters from the town's 17th-century synagogue, some 2,000 gravestones (matzevot) survive, the oldest…
Historic sites
Szydłowiec
No two headstones are alike in the Jewish cemetery of Szydłowiec. Local stonemasons, working the same sandstone used for the town hall and the parish church, carved candles, lions, deer, birds feeding their young and hands raised in blessi…
Historic sites
Zabrze
Behind a wall on ulica Cmentarna in Zabrze, modest matzevot (traditional Jewish headstones) stand next to tombs that look like mausoleums from a Christian cemetery. That contrast is the key to the place: the Jewish cemetery in Zabrze, foun…
Historic sites
Borzykowo
In the fields near Borzykowo stand striped border posts and wooden sentry boxes with carved guards – a reconstructed crossing on the line that for more than a century split the Greater Poland region between Prussia and Russia. Drawn after…
Historic sites
Bydgoszcz
The Valley of Death (Dolina Śmierci) in the Fordon district of Bydgoszcz is a wooded ravine where, in the autumn of 1939, German units shot an estimated 1,200 to 1,400 Poles and Jews from the city and its surroundings. Today it is one of t…
Entry is free with a named card booked online. A tour with an educator costs 140 zł in Polish and 150 zł in another language (reduced 130/140 zł); at peak times entry is possible only with an educator.
The museum does not recommend visits for children under 14. Memorial sites are best visited with teenagers who have been prepared for the subject.
Ostrów Lednicki – an island on Lake Lednica with the ruins of a palace and baptismal pools – is considered the probable site of Mieszko I's baptism.
Updated: · Opening hours and prices can change — check the attraction page before you go.