Where to go in Poland

Kraków

Poland's former royal capital and its best-preserved historic city, built around Europe's largest medieval market square and the cathedral on Wawel Hill.

Warsaw

The capital, rebuilt from near-total ruin after 1945. A working modern city where a reconstructed old town sits beside glass towers and serious museums.

Gdańsk

A Baltic port with a thousand years of trade behind it, a reconstructed brick Gothic centre, and the shipyard where Solidarity changed Europe.

Zakopane

Poland's mountain capital at the foot of the Tatras, with a distinctive wooden building tradition, serious hiking and a busy winter ski scene.

Wrocław

A city of islands and bridges on the Oder, with a colourful market square, a long German and Polish history and a famous cast of bronze dwarfs.

Poznań

Where the Polish state began, a confident trade-fair city with a Renaissance market square and a strong regional food identity.

Toruń

A Gothic brick city on the Vistula that came through the war intact, birthplace of Copernicus and home of Poland's most famous gingerbread.

Lublin

The largest city of eastern Poland, with a castle chapel of rare Byzantine-style frescoes, a lived-in old town and a sobering memorial on its edge.

Zamość

A Renaissance ideal city built from scratch in the sixteenth century, with an arcaded market square that has barely changed in four hundred years.

Kazimierz Dolny

A small town of Renaissance granaries on the Vistula that has drawn painters for over a century, and weekend crowds for its setting and bread.

Częstochowa

Home to the monastery of Jasna Gora and the Black Madonna, the holiest Catholic shrine in Poland and the goal of mass pilgrimages each year.

Katowice

The capital of industrial Upper Silesia, reinventing coal-era grit as culture, with a UNESCO music title, a striking concert hall and a historic miners' settlement.