Poland Itineraries

Poland is Central Europe's largest country by both area and population, a nation of 38 million people whose location at the heart of the continent has meant both extraordinary cultural richness and more than its share of tragic history. In recent decades Poland has undergone one of the most remarkable transformations in Europe — from communist austerity to a confident modern member of the European Union with some of the most atmospheric cities, best food, and most genuinely warm hospitality on the continent, all at prices that remain a fraction of Western European levels. Kraków, in the south, is Poland's unmissable jewel. Its Market Square is the largest medieval town square in Europe, anchored by the Renaissance Sukiennice (Cloth Hall) and the soaring St. Mary's Basilica from whose tower a trumpet is still sounded hourly — cut off mid-note to commemorate the 13th-century trumpeter killed by a Tatar arrow. The nearby Wawel Castle, perched on a hill above the Vistula, was the seat of Polish kings for 500 years. Kraków's former Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, once the heart of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, has been sensitively revived — synagogues, bookshops, klezmer music, and some of the city's most atmospheric cafés. A short distance away lies Oświęcim, known to most of the world as Auschwitz — the harrowing Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum preserves the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp and is an essential, if devastating, pilgrimage. Warsaw, the capital, tells a different story — nearly 85% destroyed during the Second World War, it was painstakingly rebuilt in the decades that followed. The Old Town, reconstructed from Canaletto paintings, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews (POLIN), the Warsaw Uprising Museum, and the Copernicus Science Centre anchor modern Warsaw's cultural life. The skyline mixes socialist-era Palace of Culture and Science (a "gift" from Stalin) with sleek new skyscrapers. Gdańsk, on the Baltic coast, is a hanseatic jewel with a brightly painted merchant-house main street, the historic Westerplatte peninsula where World War II began, and the famous Solidarity shipyard that birthed the labour movement that brought down communism in Eastern Europe. The Tatra Mountains in the south are Poland's playground — the picturesque alpine town of Zakopane offers hiking in summer and skiing in winter. The Białowieża Forest on the eastern border preserves one of Europe's last primeval forests and a herd of 900 European bison. Polish cuisine is hearty and deeply satisfying — pierogi dumplings with countless fillings, żurek fermented rye soup, bigos hunter's stew, barszcz beetroot soup, and, above all, the traditional baking of Polish bread and pastries. Polish vodka, more varied and refined than most foreigners realise, remains a national source of pride.