Things to do 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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Chłopskie Jadło
Old Town (012 429 5157; ul Św Jana 3) This place, a short walk south of Wawel, looks like a rustic country inn somewhere at the crossroads in medieval Poland, and serves up traditional Polish ‘peasant grub’ (as its name says). Live folk music is performed here on Friday and Saturday, and seating in antique sleighs adds to the rustic atmosphere. We love the żurek (sour rye) soup in a bread loaf.
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Gruzińskie Chaczapuri
Gruzińskie Chaczapuri ul Floriańska (ul Floriańska 26) ul Grodzka (ul Grodzka 3) If you have a hankering for something a little different, this cheap and cheerful chain of Georgian restaurants with five branches in Kraków serves up grills, salads and steaks and, the house speciality: cheese pie.
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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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Gardzienice Theatre's Ticket Office
Founded in 1977, 28km southeast of Lublin, Gardzienice Theatre is renowned in artistic circles for energetic, heady performances. Under the guidance of artistic director and founder Wlodzimierz Staniewski, dramatic montages derive inspiration from gatherings with indigenous communities throughout and beyond Poland. Check whether they are in town at the ticket office.
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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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With Fire & Sword
Named after the historical novel by Henry Sienkiewicz, this dark, atmospheric restaurant re-creates the Poland of yesteryear. The wood interior is made even more rustic with animal pelts and a roaring fire. The menu features well-researched old-time recipes, such as the succulent roasted pig that comes stuffed with fruit.
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Singer Café
Louche hang-out of choice among the Kazimierz cognoscenti, this bar pays tribute to the sewing machine that was once produced here. By day, it's an atmospheric, antique-filled cafe, where patrons sit at sewing machines and sip cappuccinos. By night, they turn up the music and the place hums until dawn.
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Jama Michalika
Established in 1895, Jama Michalika is famous as the birthplace of the Młoda Polska movement - a hang-out for writers, painters and other creative types in the days of yore. The grand Art Nouveau interior has historic appeal, but the bored staff do not offer much in the here and now.
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Bagel Mama
How clever of someone to think of selling bagels in the Jewish quarter. Whether you are a bagel traditionalist (lox and cream cheese) or a bagel innovator (warm brie and tomato), you'll find something you like. For some reason, there are also burritos on the menu.
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Karczma Zbójecka
An attractive basement eatery, this place offers regional dishes and meats grilled on a huge wood-burning rotisserie. There’s always a buzzy atmosphere and decent local folk music on some evenings.
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International School of Polish Language & Culture
A private school that gets good reports is the International School of Polish Language & Culture, with courses lasting one/two weeks (25/50 hours) costing €170/260.
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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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