Kraków and the Tatras

From the Vistula to the Tatras

The trip starts in Kraków, which you explore on foot, with the car left in a car park. Just to the south, in Wieliczka, you go down into a salt mine worked from the 13th century until 1996, with tunnels and chapels carved out of the salt.

Then the road heads south. After the wooded Beskids, then Nowy Targ, the Tatras appear above the wooden villages. For Morskie Oko, the largest lake in the Tatras, you leave the car at Palenica Białczańska and walk about nine kilometres one way, along a road closed to cars.

The way back runs through the Pieniny, further east: a wooden church, and two castles facing each other across a reservoir. There, you float down the Dunajec gorge on a wooden raft steered by boatmen in highland costume: 18 kilometres of meanders between cliffs, along the Slovak border.

The Rynek Główny is one of the largest medieval squares in Europe. Every hour, a trumpeter plays the hejnał from the top of St Mary’s Church. The tune stops in the middle of a note: according to tradition, a watchman was killed by a Tatar arrow while sounding the alarm.

To the south, Kazimierz, founded in 1335 by Casimir the Great, became Kraków’s Jewish quarter. Its Old Synagogue is the oldest surviving one in Poland. In Podgórze, Oskar Schindler’s former factory tells the story of the city under German occupation. An hour’s drive away, Auschwitz-Birkenau is the memorial site of the Holocaust. At least 1.1 million people were killed there, the vast majority of them Jews.

Zakopane and the Tatras

Zakopane was a village of górale, the highlanders of Podhale, before it became a resort in the late 19th century. In the centre, Krupówki, a pedestrian street, is lined with shops and inns. Stanisław Witkiewicz created the Zakopane style there, inspired by the wooden houses of the nearby villages. The Villa Koliba, which he designed, is now a museum. He is buried in the old cemetery of Pęksowy Brzyzek, among artists and mountain guides.

The Kasprowy Wierch cable car dates from 1936. It climbs to just below the summit, at 1,987 metres, on the Slovak border. Morskie Oko lies at 1,395 metres, beneath Rysy, Poland’s highest peak at 2,499 metres. Its name means ‘eye of the sea’: according to legend, the lake is linked to the sea by an underground passage.

What not to miss

1. 1The Wieliczka salt mineSt Kinga’s Chapel, carved out of the salt some hundred metres underground.
2. 2Kalwaria ZebrzydowskaA sanctuary founded in 1600, on the Unesco list, its chapels scattered across the hills.
3. 3WadowiceThe house where Pope John Paul II was born, now a museum.
4. 4The Oswald Balzer RoadA mountain road facing the peaks of the High Tatras.
5. 5The church at DębnoA painted wooden church from the late 15th century, on the Unesco list.
6. 6Niedzica CastleA former Hungarian fortress above Lake Czorsztyn.

Kraków and the Tatras in pictures

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The Rynek Główny and the Cloth Hall, seen from the tower of St Mary’s.

Food in Lesser Poland

In Kraków, you eat pierogi, filled dumplings, and żurek, a sour rye soup. On the street, you buy an obwarzanek, a ring of bread close to a pretzel. In Wadowice, kremówka is a cream cake that John Paul II loved as a young man.

In the mountains, oscypek is a smoked sheep’s milk cheese. It is eaten grilled, with cranberry jam. The inns of Zakopane serve kwaśnica, a sauerkraut soup.