POLAND · CENTRAL EUROPE
Medieval market squares and a cathedral carved from salt.
Kraków’s old town and the Wieliczka salt mine, Gdańsk on the Baltic and Zakopane in the Tatras, Warsaw rebuilt from rubble and the memorial at Auschwitz. The city tours and day trips that show you Poland.
Only in Poland
Three experiences that are unmistakably Polish.
Old towns and day trips you will find all over Europe. These three you will not: a chapel cut from salt, a market square that has run since the Middle Ages, and a mountain range with a culture of its own. Build the trip around them.
Beneath Kraków
A cathedral carved from salt
Miners have cut salt at Wieliczka for 700 years, and as they dug they carved: chandeliers, altarpieces and a whole chapel to St Kinga, 135 metres down, every surface worked from rock salt. You walk down a timber stair into chambers no photograph quite prepares you for.
- 1 Krakow: Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour with Entry Ticket
- 2 From Krakow: Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour
- 3 Krakow: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Salt Mine Guided Tour
On the hour
Europe’s grandest market square
Kraków’s Rynek Główny has held its shape since 1257, the Cloth Hall down the centre and St Mary’s on the corner. Every hour a trumpeter plays the hejnał from the high tower and breaks off mid-note, the way it has stopped for seven centuries. The old town came through the war whole.
- 1 Warsaw: Chopin Concert in the Old Town
- 2 Warsaw: Old Town Highlights Walking Tour in English
- 3 Old Town Krakow & Wawel Castle Walking Tour
An hour south
The Tatras and the highland towns
Under the only alpine range Poland has, the houses turn to carved larch and the cheese is smoked oscypek. Ride the cable car up Kasprowy Wierch or walk the long green valley to Morskie Oko, the mountain lake the whole country claims as its own.
- 1 Krakow–Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
- 2 Krakow–Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
- 3 Krakow: Zakopane, Thermal Springs, Cable Car, Local Tasting
The Baltic north
Where Poland meets the amber coast.
Five hundred kilometres north of Kraków, Gdańsk lines the Motława with tall Hanseatic houses and the old port crane, and the beaches at Sopot run gold with the world’s amber. The merchant city where Solidarity began, and the easiest place in Poland to fall for the sea.
Gdańsk & the coast →Start here
If you only book one day out.
The day trip most travellers add to a few days in Kraków. A good first move before you plan the rest of the week.
The classics
Poland’s Most Popular Tours
City walks, the big day trips, river cruises and food tours. The ones travellers book first.
By region
Pick where to base yourself.
Kraków for the old town and the day trips out. Warsaw for the rebuilt capital. Gdańsk for the Baltic and the amber. Zakopane for the high Tatras. Wieliczka for the salt cathedral. Wrocław for the bridges and the bronze dwarves.
By tour type
Or pick the kind of day you want.
A walking tour for the old town’s stories. The salt mine or the memorial if it is the history you came for. A river cruise, a vodka-and-pierogi crawl, a Chopin concert in a cellar, a day up in the mountains. Poland does all of them.
Plan it with care
How to visit Auschwitz.
The memorial at Oświęcim is the most visited place in Poland, and the hardest to plan well. Three ways to make the trip from Kraków, and what each one asks of your day.
Warsaw
The capital they rebuilt from paintings.
The war left Warsaw’s old town in rubble. The city put it back square by square from old canvases and plans, and the result sits on the UNESCO list for the act of rebuilding itself. Castle Square and the Royal Route, Łazienki park, Chopin under the trees, and the Palace of Culture over all of it.
- 1 Warsaw: Traditional Galar Cruise on The Vistula River
- 2 Warsaw Concert: Chopin – Painted by Candlelights with Wine
- 3 Warsaw: City Sightseeing Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
Kazimierz & Podgórze
The Kraków history turned on.
Kazimierz was the Jewish quarter for 500 years; across the river in Podgórze stood the wartime ghetto, and Oskar Schindler’s enamel factory survives as a museum of the occupation. Three walks through the most weighted streets in the city.
Pierogi, żurek and a cold one
The Polish table.
Pierogi pinched by hand, sour rye żurek served in a bread bowl, herring with cellar vodka, and the milk-bar canteens that have fed Kraków since communist times. The tours that eat and drink their way across the city.
Once the squares empty
Poland after dark.
Chopin by candlelight in a tenement cellar, an evening cruise along the Vistula, and the bars of Kazimierz that do not really start until midnight. How the cities spend their nights.
Plan it
Three perfect days from Kraków.
First time in Poland? A long weekend based in Kraków that takes in the old town, the big day trips and the mountains without a wasted morning.
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