Where to Drink in Krakow: Bars and Nightlife

Krakow's drinking splits between two areas that behave very differently. The Old Town, minutes from the Main Market Square, holds the cellar bars, cocktail rooms and vodka counters, and it starts early and stays fairly polite. Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter about fifteen minutes' walk south, is the actual nightlife district and runs until the small hours. Pick one per night rather than covering both.

Many of the best Old Town bars sit below street level. The ground here has risen over the centuries, so rooms that once opened onto the street are now a flight down, and their brick vaults have served as bars for decades. No daylight, patchy phone signal, no sense of what time it is.

Above ground, Cafe Camelot at Swietego Tomasza 17 is the daytime counterpart, good for coffee, cake and a glass of wine after, with the long-running Loch Camelot cabaret and theatre stage in the cellars below. It is one of the few places near the square where you can talk at normal volume.

Krakow's nightlife actually lives in Kazimierz, and its centre is Plac Nowy, the square with the round brick market hall in the middle, built in 1900. Bars ring the square and continue down Estery, Jozefa and Meiselsa, and on a warm weekend the drinking happens as much on the pavement as inside.

Alchemia on Plac Nowy is the one to start with. Open since 1999, it runs on candlelight, mismatched furniture and small dark rooms, with a back space for live music, and it set the tone the neighbouring bars have followed. From there you can move between four or five places in ten minutes on foot, which is why people who stay in Kazimierz rarely leave it at night.

Vodka here is drunk cold, in a small measure, in one go, and with food rather than a mixer. Wodka Cafe Bar at Mikolajska 5 is the easiest place to try that properly: a small room with a long list of flavoured vodkas and house infusions, from hazelnut and raspberry to quince and sour cherry. Seating is limited, so go early or expect to stand.

Ask for nalewka if you want the sweeter end of the scale. These are fruit or herb infusions, stronger than wine and served in the same small glass, and most bars keep a few. Order pickles or herring alongside, as locals do. The toast is na zdrowie.

Polish craft brewing has been strong for over a decade, and Krakow has a dense multitap scene, concentrated in Kazimierz with more around the Old Town. These bars pour a rotating list of Polish beers, usually chalked up with style and strength, and staff will pour tasters before you commit.

Two words help. Piwo rzemieslnicze means craft beer, and asking for male gets you a small glass, worth knowing when the beer turns out to be eight per cent. Mass-market lager is everywhere and costs noticeably less.

For cocktails, Mercy Brown at Straszewskiego 28 is the best known address, a prohibition-style bar on the first floor of a historic building, reached through the cloakroom of the restaurant below and carrying no sign. Book ahead: it is a sit-down room, not a place to arrive at with eight people at midnight.

Charlotte on Plac Szczepanski bakes its own bread and pastries downstairs, opens at seven in the morning and pours wine until late, a rare Krakow venue that suits both ends of the day. Across the river in Podgorze, ZaKladka Food & Wine on Jozefinska is food-led, but the wine list is the reason to book, and it suits a longer evening if you are already eating across the water.

Krakow has few true rooftop bars, and the few that exist are mostly seasonal hotel terraces. The riverside address people still name first is the former Hotel Forum, a modernist block of the 1980s on the southern bank of the Vistula facing Wawel. Forum Przestrzenie, the bar and cultural space that made it famous, closed in March 2024 after eleven years, and the building has since reopened under new operators, with deckchairs by the water in summer. Check what is running before you go.

For caffeine rather than alcohol, the speciality coffee scene is genuinely good. Karma Coffee roasts its own beans at its Kazimierz site and makes a useful morning stop, within the wider Polish speciality coffee scene.

A night out costs less than the equivalent in western Europe, though Old Town prices sit above Kazimierz ones, so read the general cost of a trip to Poland with that in mind. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, but carrying a little cash helps for cloakrooms, common in winter and often charged per item.

The legal drinking age is 18. Drinking alcohol in public places, including streets, squares, parks and public transport, is prohibited by national law, with only officially designated spots exempt, and police do issue on-the-spot fines. For a longer stay, a three-day Krakow itinerary leaves room for one late night without writing off a morning.