Ninety seconds on Ostrów Tumski
Ostrów Tumski is the oldest part of Wrocław, a former island of churches and cobbled lanes, and you should time your walk for dusk, when its gas lamps are lit one by one by hand.
More than 100 gas lamps light the lanes. A lamplighter in a black top hat and a cape bearing the Wrocław coat of arms walks the same route of about 3.5 kilometres, lighting each lamp in turn. The round takes him a little over an hour, and he comes back to put the lamps out again before morning.
Ostrów Tumski was a true island until the river arms around it were filled in at the start of the 19th century. The ponds by the seminary and in the Botanical Garden are what remains of that water.
Among the churches, look for St Giles, a late-Romanesque church from the early 13th century. The Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St Bartholomew's share one building, one church on each of its two levels.
After crossing the riveted steel Tumski Bridge, the main pedestrian way onto the island, carry on to the Holy Cross church and the statue of St John of Nepomuk nearby.
From there, walk on past the cathedral to St Giles and look up at the gates for the Kluska, a dumpling that in local legend fled a hungry man's pot and landed on top of one. Then find the garden behind the Theological Faculty building, which looks across the Oder to the National Museum.
The lamps hang three to four metres up, so you can follow the lamplighter's round from the lane.
Sundays and church holidays are busier around service times, so a weekday visit is quieter.
Leave padlocks off Tumski Bridge. The bridge has been fully restored, and nothing may now be attached to it.
If you have more time, add the Botanical Garden next door.
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