100km (62 miles) S of Kraków
Zakopane, in the foothills of the High Tatra mountains, is Poland's leading mountain resort. It's absolutely mobbed during the winter ski season, so advance preparations are in order if you're coming from late December through March. The summer hiking season is also busy, especially in August when the town hosts an annual folklore festival, though not quite as overrun as winter. During the rest of the year, it's possible to sense some of the beauty and rustic charm that first began drawing holidaymakers here in the 19th century.
Zakopane plays a role in Poland's literary and cultural history that may be unprecedented as far as mountain resorts go. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, members of Poland's intellectual elite decamped here in a bid no less ambitious than to reinvent, or at least reinterpret, Polish culture. Many of the country's leading young writers, poets, painters, and architects gathered here and found something uniquely Polish in the unspoiled nature and solid mountain cottages of simple people.
The two World Wars and the decades of Communism that followed put an end to the Zakopane art colony, but some of that special, funky feeling remains. Certainly the huge wooden 19th-century houses here -- known throughout Poland as the "Zakopane Style" -- are some of the most beautiful you'll see anywhere, and in an among the trees and the gardens -- and away from the crowds -- you can still find traces of a uniquely Polish resort that feels very much of a different age.
