Things to do
28-
St. Mary's Basilica
Come for the altarpiece Veit Stoss carved for this church, the largest wooden Gothic altarpiece in Europe, and stand in the nave as its five carved wings are opened.
View more → -
Wieliczka Salt Mine
From the first stair down, you walk through chambers and brine lakes cut by miners from rock salt, 135 metres under a small town outside Kraków, to St Kinga's Chapel, a hall carved from salt.
View more → -
Wawel Castle
Worth at least a morning, Wawel is the hilltop palace of Poland's kings, with the Brussels tapestries of King Sigismund II Augustus still on its walls. You get the Renaissance court, the royal cathedral and a view over the Vistula from one hill.
View more → -
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
Book the entry slot online weeks ahead and budget half the day; the shuttle between the two sites is included and should not be skipped.
-
Kazimierz
Half an hour on foot around Szeroka and Plac Nowy is enough if the road is calling; parking along Starowislna is easier than in the Old Town.
-
Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory
One factory building in Kraków tells two stories you should see together: the city under German occupation, room by room, and Oskar Schindler, who saved over a thousand people.
View more → -
Cloth Hall
A covered trading hall in the centre of the square, given its Renaissance parapet of grinning masks after a fire in 1555. Textile merchants once dealt here; the stalls along the central passage now sell amber, carved boxes and sheepskin. Upstairs is a gallery of nineteenth century Polish painting, large canvases of national history, with a café terrace overlooking the basilica.
-
Father Bernatek Footbridge
Worth crossing slowly, this footbridge over the Vistula takes you from Kazimierz into Podgórze beneath a line of sculpted acrobats.
View more → -
Kościuszko Mound
About 25 minutes uphill through the park from Salwator leads to this grassy earth mound west of the centre, where a path climbs to a view over every district of the city. Bus 100 from Salwator and bus 101 from Rondo Grunwaldzkie save the walk.
-
Kraków Barbican
Climbing to the upper walkways of this round brick bastion outside the Florian Gate puts you inside one of only three Gothic barbicans in Europe still in their original form.
View more → -
Kraków Christmas Market
Plan your trip around Thursday 3 December, and be at the Mickiewicz monument by ten to see the szopki before they are carried off at noon. Save the stalls for a weekday evening, when you can still reach the counters.
View more → -
Krakus Mound
Free and never closed, this ancient earth mound in Podgórze is a short, steep climb to a full circle of view over the centre and Wawel. Go in the late afternoon, and wear shoes with grip in wet weather, because the path has no barrier.
-
Main Square
You can take in one of the largest medieval market squares in Europe, with the Cloth Hall, a leaning Gothic tower and the little Church of St Wojciech, all in a single view.
View more → -
Planty Park
When the medieval walls were demolished in the 1820s the moat was filled and planted, leaving a belt of chestnut and lime trees four kilometres around that completely encircles the old town. It is the natural way to walk between sights without crossing traffic. Low stone outlines mark where gates and towers stood. Benches fill with students from the university in term time.
-
Podgórze
South of the river from Kazimierz, Podgórze has the city's main wartime sites: Ghetto Heroes Square, the Eagle Pharmacy, and Schindler's Factory with MOCAK beside it. Give it a morning and walk back over the Father Bernatek footbridge. The Old Town is a 15 to 20 minute walk or a tram ride away.
-
Tyniec Abbey
A limestone cliff over the Vistula lifts Tyniec Abbey up like a fortress. It is the oldest men's monastery still standing in Poland, and on its tour you put a hand on the Romanesque wall of its first church.
View more → -
Vistula Boulevards
The riverside path runs along both banks of the Vistula below Wawel Castle, and you see the castle hill from the water's edge, not the streets.
View more → -
Wawel Cathedral
The coronation church of Polish monarchs and the burial place of most of them, along with national poets and heroes, in a crypt that serves as the country's pantheon. Chapels of every period crowd its flanks, one under a dome of real gold. A wooden stair climbs the tower to the Sigismund Bell, cast in 1520 and rung only on great occasions.
-
Zakrzówek
The turquoise water of a flooded limestone quarry in south Kraków holds five floating pools, and you swim in them under sheer white cliffs.
View more → -
Collegium Maius
The oldest building of the Jagiellonian University, founded in 1364, arranged around a brick courtyard with a Gothic arcade. Copernicus studied here in the 1490s, and the museum keeps astronomical instruments of his time and a globe of about 1510 that is among the first to show America. At set hours a clock in the courtyard parades wooden figures of kings and professors.
-
Eagle Pharmacy
Tadeusz Pankiewicz's pharmacy, the only one left inside Kraków's wartime ghetto, shows you those years through the rooms of a single working shop on the edge of Ghetto Heroes Square.
View more → -
Galicia Jewish Museum
Seeing the traces of Jewish life and its destruction across Galicia, photographed in colour as they stand today, is why you come to this museum in Kazimierz.
View more → -
Ghetto Heroes Square
Once the main square of the wartime ghetto, this open space in Podgórze is now a memorial of oversized iron chairs set out in rows across the paving. The Eagle Pharmacy stands on its edge, and the tram stop on the square links it with Kazimierz across the river.
-
MOCAK
Allow two hours for the painting, photography, installation and video in this contemporary art museum, built on the old factory site in Zabłocie beside Schindler's Factory. Entry is free on certain days, and the gallery sits a few steps from the factory museum's door.
-
Nowa Huta
There is a whole planned town inside Kraków here: you walk from Plac Centralny along broad avenues lined with arcades, through Poland's flagship example of socialist-realist planning, to the boat-shaped Ark of the Lord church.
View more → -
Old Synagogue
Built as a synagogue in the Middle Ages, this building on Szeroka Street no longer has a religious role and now holds a museum of Jewish traditions. It stands at the heart of Kazimierz, a few steps from Remuh and the cafés of the street.
-
Remuh Synagogue
One visit here takes you through a working prayer hall on Szeroka Street and into the old Jewish cemetery behind it, where one rabbi's grave, still visited from abroad, came through the war undamaged.
View more → -
Rynek Underground
Archaeologists digging under the market square between 2005 and 2010 found the medieval town four metres down: cobbled roads, burnt stalls, a cemetery, merchants' lead seals from across Europe. The excavation was roofed over and opened as a museum, with glass walkways above the remains and holograms to explain them. Entry is limited and timed. The entrance is inside the Cloth Hall.
