Sights in Małopolska
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Salt Mine
Just outside the administrative boundaries of Kraków, some 14km southeast of the city centre, Wieliczka (vyeh- leech -kah) is famous for its ultra-deep Salt Mine, which has been in continuous operation for 700 years and can be visited. It’s an eerie world of pits and chambers, and everything has been carved by hand from salt blocks. The mine was included on Unesco’s World Heritage List in 1978.
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Monastery of Jasna Góra
Impressive though it is, the exterior of Monastery of Jasna Góra gives little indication of the grandeur layered behind its walls. Exploring this functioning monastery gives a fascinating insight into its history, and a deep appreciation for its present day relevance. Arrive early and take your time.
You are free to wander around the complex at your own leisure (crowds permitting). Audio guides are available for four routes; the most important covers the main sanctuary and takes 45 minutes.
In the oldest part of the complex, the Chapel of Our Lady (Kaplica Cudownego Obrazu) contains the revered Black Madonna.The picture is ceremoniously unveiled at 06:00 and 13:30 (14:00 …
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Kazimierz
Today one of Kraków's inner suburbs and located within walking distance south of Wawel and the Old Town, Kazimierz was for a long time an independent town with its own municipal charter and laws. Its colourful history was determined by its mixed Jewish-Polish population, and though the ethnic structure is now wholly different, the architecture gives a good picture of its past, with clearly distinguishable sectors of what were Christian and Jewish quarters.
The suburb is home to many important tourist sights, including churches, synagogues and museums. The western part of Kazimierz was traditionally Catholic, and although many Jews settled here from the early 19th century…
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St Mary's Church
Rising over the northeastern corner of Rynek Główny, St Mary's is Kraków's most important church, after Wawel Cathedral. The original church, built in the 1220s, was destroyed during the Tatar raids, and the edifice you see today is a 15th-century creation. From the outside, the most striking feature of the church is its two towers, of unequal height.
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Oskar Schindler’s Enamelware Factory
About 400km east of Plac Bohaterów Getta is Oskar Schindler’s enamelware factory.
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Castle
Despite its relatively friendly façade, the 14th-century Castle has a grim history. It was rebuilt as a prison in the 1820s and remained so until 1954. During WWII, more than 100,000 people suffered here at the hands of Nazi occupiers before being transported on to extermination camps. Hundreds of Jewish and Polish political prisoners had survived here until July 1944, only to be shot mere hours before the Red Army liberated the city.
Since 1957, the castle has housed the Lublin Museum with a collection ranging from silverware and porcelain to woodcarvings and weaponry. The particularly impressive art includes big names (such as Jacek Malczewski) and big pictures, such a…
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Rynek Wielki
The Old Town is 600m long, 400m wide and surrounds a main square of exactly 100m by 100m. Look out for plaques on key buildings around Rynek Wielki , which offer succinct information about the buildings' former use. The Italianate Renaissance Rynek is lined with arcaded burghers' houses (arcades were made compulsory by Jan Zamoyski himself).
Each side of the Rynek (bar the northern side dominated by the lofty pink town hall) has eight houses bisected by two main axes of town; one runs west-east from the palace to the bastion, and the other joins the three market squares north to south.Originally, all the houses in the square were topped with decorative parapets, but these…
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Majdanek State Museum
Some 4km southeast of Lublin’s centre is Majdanek extermination camp, where tens of thousands were murdered. The site is now the Majdanek State Museum, founded only four months after the camp’s liberation – the first of its kind in the world. Unlike other extermination camps, the Nazis went to no effort to conceal Majdanek. Coming from the main road, the sudden appearance of time-frozen guard towers and barbed-wire fences interrupting the sprawl of suburbia is disquieting. The details are all the more confronting; gas chambers are open to visitors, and many of the prisoners’ possessions are on display. The 5km walk through the museum starts at the Visitor’s Centre, pass…
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Cistercian Abbey
Until the construction of the Church of Our Lady Queen of Poland in 1977, Nowa Hutans used the two historic churches that had somehow managed to escape the avalanche of concrete. They are both on the southeastern outskirts of Nowa Huta, in the Mogiła suburb about 2.5km southeast of Plac Centralny (tram 15), and are worth a visit if you are in the area.
Across the road from the small, shingled Church of St Bartholomew is the Cistercian Abbey , which consists of a church and monastery with a large garden-park behind it. The Cistercians came to Poland in 1140 and founded abbeys around the country, including this one in 1222. The church, open most of the day, has a large thr…
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Podgórze
The working-class suburb of Podgórze would pique few travellers' curiosities if it wasn't for the notorious role it played during WWII. It was here that the Nazis herded some 15,000 Jews into a ghetto and continued to empty it by way of deportations to the concentration camps, including one a short distance to the southwest in Płaszów.
The centre of the ghetto was Plac Zgody, the ironically named 'Peace Square' that is today known as Plac Bohaterów Getta, where the process of selecting who would stay and who would be placed on the waiting train to one of the camps was made. Today it is marked by a memorial by Kraków architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Latak consisti…
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Dominican Priory
Originally a Gothic complex founded by King Kazimierz III Wielki in 1342, the Dominican Priory was rebuilt in Renaissance style after it was ravaged by fire in 1575. Two historic highlights inside the church are the Chapel of the Firlej Family (1615), containing family members’ tombstones; and the Tyszkiewicz Chapel (1645–59), with impressive Renaissance stuccowork. For an insight into 18th-century Lublin, note the large historical painting, The Fire of Lublin, which depicts the 1719 fire (in the Szaniawski family chapel to your right as you enter the church). The Dominian Basilica was closed by the Russians in 1886; the monks returned just before the outbreak of WWII…
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Pauline Church of Ss Michael & Stanislaus
This most esteemed church is commonly known as the Skałka (Rock) due to its location on a once-rocky promontory. Today's mid-18th-century Baroque church is associated with Bishop Stanisław (Stanislaus) Szczepanowski, patron saint of Poland. In 1079, the bishop was beheaded by King Bolesław Śmiały (Boleslaus the Bold): see the very tree trunk where the dirty deed was done, now in a place of honour next to the altar. Apparently the bishop's dismembered remains were tossed into a nearby pond, but the body miraculously re-formed, demonstrating the healing powers of the waters. Now the Skałka is a sort of national pantheon. The crypt underneath the church shelters the tombs of…
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Adam Mickiewicz statue
A few steps north from the Church of St Adalbert on Rynek Główny (the Main Market Square) is the Adam Mickiewicz statue surrounded by four allegorical figures representing the Motherland, Learning, Poetry and Valour. The szopki (Nativity scenes) competition is held beside the statue in early December.
The flower stalls, usually to the north of the statue and traditionally run by women, have been trading on this site since medieval times. The area in between is the 'pasture' for Kraków's pigeon population, which the city - unbelievably - encourages. The area is currently fenced off as excavations for a possible underground shopping and entertainment complex are going on …
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Auschwitz Jewish Center
In the centre of the town of Oświęcim, the excellent Auschwitz Jewish Center approaches the Holocaust from another angle, with permanent exhibitions building up a picture of Oświęcim’s thriving Jewish community in the years before WWII. While the restored synagogue (1913), archive photos and Judaica found beneath the town’s Great Synagogue in 2004 are much less harrowing than the camps’ displays, trying to reconcile the family portraits here with the museum’s ranks of mug shots quickly brings home the realities of what happened. It’s hard to forget you’re looking at the last remnants of Polish Jewry, an all-but-exterminated culture.
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Hala Targowa
On the eastern edge of the Old Town is the Hala Targowa, the old Market Hall and prime site of massive renovation works to upscale existing shops and cafés and add new attractions. The market is adjacent to the best surviving Bastion, No 7. Walking tours of the walls can be arranged in various languages through Zamojski Ośrodek Informacji Turystycznej, but plans may be disrupted by renovation works.
The entrance is by the Lviv Gate (Brama Lwowska), built in 1599 as the main eastern access gate. It still retains some original decorations, including a Latin inscription concerning the foundation of the town, and the Zamoyski family coat of arms.
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Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is housed in a large, finely restored granary from 1591. Though there is little information in English, kids will enjoy seeing the range of birds, animals and insects (albeit stuffed). Of particular interest is the video showing the process of taxidermy (animal stuffing, which, it turns out, is far less gruesome than it sounds) and a busy beehive whose occupants are blissfully oblivious to the fact that they live in a Big Brother beehive. Note the intricate wooden structure supporting the roof on the top floor; it’s an exquisite example of 16th-century engineering, joining beams with pegs rather than nails.
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Ogrodzieniec Castle
Claiming prime position on the highest hill of the upland (504m), the ruins of Ogrodzieniec Castle look like they belong in a medieval-style fairytale. Incorporating natural rock in its foundations and parts of the walls, the fortress was built during the reign of King Kazimierz III Wielki but enlarged in the mid-16th century by its owner, Seweryn Boner, a wealthy banker from Kraków. Boner employed Italian masters from the royal court to remodel the castle into a Renaissance residence. After exploring the nooks and crannies of this enormous complex, it’s easy to believe reports that the castle was once as splendid as Wawel.
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Three Crosses’ Mountain
The path to the right slightly uphill from the parish church, leads to the Three Crosses’ Mountain. If you’re coming from the watchtower, take the path to the left. There is some historical debate about the relationship between the crosses and the plague, which decimated the population of the town in 1708. It’s doubtful whether human remains found at the site when the crosses were erected in 1852 belong to plague victims. Some historians believe that the site was referred to as ‘cross mountain’ long before the cholera epidemic. Whatever the origins of its name, the mountain affords sensational views.
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Remuh Cemetery
Founded in the mid-16th century, it was closed for burials in the late 18th century, when a new and larger graveyard was established. During WWII Nazis vandalised and razed the tombstones, but during postwar conservation work some 700 gravestones, many of them outstanding Renaissance examples and dating back four centuries, were uncovered. It seems that the Jewish faithful themselves had buried the stones to avoid their desecration by foreign armies, which repeatedly invaded Kraków in the 18th century. The tombstones have been meticulously restored, making the place one of the best-preserved Renaissance Jewish cemeteries anywhere in Europe.
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Kantor's Atelier
Even in life it was hard to define Tadeusz Kantor, a master of both performance and visual arts, who blurred the line between genres. Poet, painter, set designer and actor, he delighted and confounded his audiences with his one-man avant-garde extravaganzas. The venue for his performances was the Cricot 2 Theatre - defunct since his death in 1990. But the Crikoteka archive documents his life work, maintaining a collection of set designs, costumes, photographs and videos. Kantor's Atelier is also open to the public, housing a small gallery of pieces that the artist created towards the end of his life.
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National Museum
National Museum, where 17th- and 18th-century interiors are so alive you feel like you’re trespassing in a bishop’s boudoir. Keep an eye on the ornamental ceilings (plafonds) painted from 1641 by Venetian Tommaso Dolabella. The centrepiece is the former dining hall where the whole brood of bishops stare down from their 56 portraits. The upper and lower portraits of this evocative historical montage were painted two centuries apart. The rest of this captivatingly cavernous multilevel museum leads through collections of porcelain, historical armour and various centuries and genres of Polish painting.
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Cathedral
The Cathedral, just southwest of the Rynek, was built by Morando (around 1587 to 1598) as a votive offering and mausoleum for the Zamoyskis. The exterior of the building changed dramatically in the 19th century, but the interior maintained many original features.
Note the authentic Lublin-Renaissance-style vault, the stone and stuccowork, and the unusual arcaded organ loft. In the high altar is the rococo silver tabernacle of 1745. Jan Zamoyski's tomb is under the black marble in the chapel at the head of the right-hand aisle. The stairs next to the chapel lead to the family crypt.
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Roztocze National Park
Decreed in 1974, Roztocze National Park covers an area of 79 sq km to the south and east of Zwierzyniec. The site was a nature reserve for more than 350 years as part of the Zamoyski family estate. Following the purchase of a vast stretch of land (complete with six towns, 149 villages and about 1600 sq km of forest) in 1589, Jan Zamoyski created an enclosed game reserve named Zwierzyniec (zoological garden). This was a remarkable achievement at that time, given that this was not a hunting ground but a protected area for various animal species to roam in relative freedom.
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Church of Our Lady Queen of Poland
The Church of Our Lady Queen of Polandis otherwise known as the Arka Pana (Lord’s Ark). This interesting, though rather heavy, ark-shaped construction was the first new church permitted in Nowa Huta after WWII, and was completed in 1977 entirely by volunteer labourers. Up till then, Nowa Hutans used the two historic churches that had somehow managed to escape the avalanche of concrete. They are both on the southeastern outskirts of Nowa Huta, in the Mogiła suburb about 2.5km southeast of Plac Centralny (tram 15), and are worth a visit if you are in the area.
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Chapel of the Holy Trinity
At the eastern end of the castle is its most prized asset – the exquisite 14th-century Chapel of the Holy Trinity, featured on many postcards (the photographers must have snuck in a flash and a wide angle lens). The chapel is covered from floor to ceiling with polychrome Russo-Byzantine frescoes. Painted in 1418, only to be later plastered over, they were rediscovered in 1897 and painstakingly restored over a hundred-year period. These are possibly the finest examples of medieval wall paintings in the country, so colour-rich you could lick the paint off the walls.
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