Poland

One of the best-preserved medieval city centres in Europe, Kraków's Old Town was spared the destruction that levelled Warsaw and retains its original character intact. The Royal Castle on Wawel Hill — home to a magnificent collection of Renaissance tapestries, royal tombs, and a dragon's cave — overlooks a city of Gothic churches, Renaissance courtyards, and the vast Rynek Główny market square, the largest medieval market square in Europe.

A working salt mine continuously operated for 700 years, Wieliczka descends nine levels into an underground world of carved chapels, salt sculptures, subterranean lakes, and illuminated chambers — including the extraordinary Chapel of St Kinga, a full-sized church carved entirely from rock salt 101 metres below the surface. The mine employs its own underground doctors, post office, and sanatorium, and produces microclimate conditions used to treat respiratory conditions.

Kraków's historic Jewish quarter, established in the 15th century and home to seven synagogues and one of Central Europe's most significant pre-war Jewish communities, Kazimierz was devastated during the Second World War and has been transformed into one of Central Europe's most vibrant urban neighbourhoods. Independent restaurants, boutique hotels in converted townhouses, art galleries, and the annual Jewish Culture Festival make Kazimierz the most creatively alive part of Kraków.

Warsaw's Old Town was reconstructed stone by stone from 18th-century paintings after 85% of the city was razed in World War II — it is now itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site, testament to extraordinary collective will. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, built on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, is one of the finest museums in Europe, presenting 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland in an immersive, architecturally remarkable building.

The High Tatras straddle the Polish-Slovak border south of the highland capital Zakopane, rising to nearly 2,500 metres in a landscape of glacial lakes, granite peaks, and spruce forests. The Tatry National Park protects the entire Polish side of the range, and its trails — to Morskie Oko, the Eye of the Sea, and the dramatic Orla Perć ridge — are among the finest in Central Europe. Zakopane's distinctive wooden architecture, smoked sheep's cheese, and highland folk traditions give it a character entirely its own.

One of Europe's great Hanseatic merchant cities, Gdańsk's Long Lane and Long Market are lined with tall, gabled Renaissance townhouses in a style that owes as much to the Netherlands as to Poland. The city's amber workshops, Gothic brick churches, and extraordinary maritime museum sit alongside the Solidarity Centre, where Poland's trade union movement that helped end communist rule across Eastern Europe was born. The Hel Peninsula — a 35-kilometre sand spit extending into the Baltic — and the elegant resort town of Sopot complete the coast.