Region
Lublin Region
Masovia (Mazowsze) is Poland's central region and home to Warsaw, the national capital rebuilt from the ground up after the Second World War. It is the country's political and business heart, and for most travellers the first point of arrival.
Warsaw carries the region: a reconstructed Old Town on the UNESCO list, the palaces and parks of the Royal Route and Lazienki, and a fast-growing modern skyline and museum scene. The Vistula runs through the city, its eastern bank left green and wild in stretches.
Beyond the capital, Masovia is flat, farmed and threaded with rivers. The Kampinos forest on Warsaw's edge is a national park within reach of the city, and to the west lies Zelazowa Wola, the birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin, now a museum and park.
Warsaw is the obvious base, with the country's largest airport and main rail hub putting the rest of Poland within a few hours. Two or three days cover the city comfortably, with time for a Chopin or Kampinos side trip.
Destinations
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.
Places to see
Castle
Lublin Castle
A hilltop castle whose Gothic chapel holds a rare cycle of Byzantine-style frescoes from 1418, the finest sight in the city.
Attraction
Great Market Square, Zamosc
A near-perfect Renaissance square of arcaded, pastel burgher houses, the centrepiece of a sixteenth-century ideal city.
Restaurant
Mandragora
A candlelit restaurant on the Old Town market recreating Lublin's pre-war Jewish and Polish cooking.
Hotel
Grand Hotel Lublinianka
A restored early-20th-century hotel on the main promenade with a spa in its cellars.
Attraction
Stare Miasto (Lublin)
Lublin's medieval Old Town winds through narrow lanes and hidden courtyards, with painted Renaissance facades and Rynek square framing the old Trybunal (Crown Tribunal) at its centre.
Attraction
Kaplica Trojcy Swietej
Inside the castle, the Holy Trinity Chapel is covered floor to ceiling with rare Ruthenian-Byzantine frescoes from 1418, a unique blend of Eastern painting under a Western Gothic vault.
Attraction
Brama Krakowska
The 14th-century Krakow Gate is Lublin's best-known landmark, a brick tower that guarded the road to Krakow and now houses a small history museum.
Museum
Majdanek Memorial
The preserved site of a German Nazi concentration and extermination camp on the edge of Lublin, kept as a memorial to its victims.
Attraction
Zamość Town Hall
The pink-and-white town hall on the north side of Zamość's Great Market Square, with a 52-metre clock tower and a fan-shaped double staircase that sweeps down into the square. It is the most photographed building in the city.