• Wawel (Kraków): Poland's pride and joy, and the country's number-one tourist attraction, the original castle dates from around the 10th century, when the area was first chosen as the seat of Polish kings. For more than 5 centuries, the castle stood as the home of Polish royalty.
  • Malbork Castle: This castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the biggest brick castle in the world, is silent testimony to the power and influence the Teutonic Knights once had in this part of Poland.
  • Ksiaz Castle (Wabrzych): The 400-room Ksiaz Castle is the biggest castle in Lower Silesia. It was originally laid out in the 13th century by members of the early Polish nobility but was refurbished and rebuilt several times down through the centuries, resulting in today's baroque-Renaissance-rococo-neoclassical mish-mash.
  • St. Mary's Cathedral (Kraków): Kraków is a city of churches, and this is its signature house of worship, right on the main square. The elaborately carved 15th-century wooden altarpiece is the biggest of its kind in Europe. The rest of the interior is similarly impressive, but the highlight of the church is not on the inside, it's the forlorn bugler in the high tower, playing his hourly dirge.
  • Zamosc Synagogue (Zamosc): An unexpected and beautiful reminder of the size and vitality of the pre-World War II Jewish community in Zamosc. Nearly every southern Polish city had a sizable Jewish community before the war, but very few synagogues of this quality have survived.
  • St. Mary's Basilica (Gdansk): This enormous red-brick church is reputedly the largest of its kind in the world. Its nave and 31 chapels can hold more than 20,000 people. The church endeared itself to the people of Gdansk in the years after the imposition of martial law in 1981, when members of the Solidarity trade union sheltered here.
  • St. Elizabeth Church (Wrocaw): Wrocaw was so thoroughly rebuilt following World War II that it's only in the city's solemn red-brick churches, like this one on the northwest corner of the main square, that you really see something of prewar Breslau (and witness the surviving scars of the war).
  • Kodzko Fortress: This fortress has played an important strategic role for centuries, straddling the traditional borderland first between the Polish and Bohemian kingdoms, and then later Prussia and Austria. The present massive structure dates from the middle of the 18th century. Napoleon, early on, shattered the fortress's illusion of invincibility by capturing the structure in 1807. During World War II, the Nazis used the fortress to hold political prisoners. Today, it is the region's leading tourist attraction for the labyrinth of underground tunnels once used for troop mustering, hiding, and escape, if necessary.

Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.