Things to do in Poland: 28 experiences worth the trip

2 to 3 hours undergroundTimed entry

Go 135 metres down into a salt mine where miners carved chambers, salt lakes and chapels, and even the chandeliers are salt.

2 hours with Rynek UndergroundNo booking needed

One of Europe's largest medieval squares, with the Cloth Hall in the middle and a bugle call broken off mid-note every hour.

About 3.5 hours with a guide, plus travelTimed entry

Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the former German Nazi camp in Oświęcim: plan the visit ahead, because entry cards are only reserved online.

45 minutes, 1.5 hours with the towerNo booking needed

Watch the wings of Veit Stoss's carved wooden altarpiece open at 11:50, with the Dormition of the Virgin at its centre.

2 hoursFree

An old town blown up in 1944 and rebuilt, listed by UNESCO as the world's first attempt to bring back an entire historic centre.

2 to 3 hoursNo booking needed

Crawl through a replica sewer as the insurgents did, in a museum that tells the 63 days of the 1944 uprising.

5 to 6 hours return on footBook ahead

The largest lake in the Polish Tatras sits under walls of rock at the end of a valley walk; the hard part is parking.

1 hour 20 minutes to almost 4 hoursNo booking needed

Sail three lakes and three canals from Giżycko, through Masurian lakes joined by 19th-century canals and past a hand-operated swing bridge.

2 hoursFree

Follow the line kings took into Gdańsk, past gabled facades to Neptune's bronze fountain and out through the Green Gate to the river.

3 to 4 hours on the Historical RouteBook ahead

The Teutonic Knights' headquarters on the Nogat, by land area the largest castle in the world, and all of it brick.

45 minutesNo booking needed

Pierogi ruskie and a soup such as żurek, at a cheap Polish canteen that survived communism, ordered at the counter and carried on a tray.

An eveningFree

Bars in old courtyards and cellars around Plac Nowy, in a district that was for centuries the heart of Jewish life in Kraków.

Half a dayFree

A Renaissance town laid out by an architect from Padua on Italian theories of the ideal city, around a square of arcaded houses.

A full dayBook ahead

Walk with a licensed guide into part of Europe's last large lowland primeval forest, home to free-roaming European bison.

1.5 to 2 hoursNo booking needed

A castle blown up in 1944 and rebuilt from 1971 to 1984, with Bellotto's views of 18th-century Warsaw in the Canaletto Room.

2 hours with the beachNo booking needed

Walk out 458 metres over the water on the longest wooden pier in Europe, where locals come for the sea air.

Half a day with the old townNo booking needed

Walk into the Gothic townhouses that belonged to Copernicus's family, then bake Toruń's gingerbread at a workshop.

A few hours to several daysBook ahead

Paddle a slow, winding river through the Pisz Forest, often described as one of the most beautiful canoe trails in Europe.

1 hour, plus the island at duskNo booking needed

The easiest high view in Wrocław: a lift up the cathedral tower, with the Oder islands below and the Old Town spires to the south.

1 hourFree

Smoked sheep's cheese from the Tatra highlands, grilled on Zakopane's main street and served hot with cranberry jam.

About 1 hour for the Historical RouteBook ahead

Concrete corridors and huge chambers that Nazi Germany cut into the Owl Mountains with forced labour, for a purpose never fully established.

1 hour for the recitalFree

Chopin played live at the foot of his bronze monument in Łazienki park, on summer Sundays, with free entrance and a seat on the grass.

Half a day to a full dayNo booking needed

Easy walking among forested moraine hills and glacial lakes about 15 km from Poznań, to a lake with castle ruins on an island.

An afternoon and eveningFree

Spend the evening in the brick courtyards of a Łódź cotton mill that worked until 1990, now full of bars and restaurants.

An hour or twoFree

Żubrówka with apple juice, the drink Poles call szarlotka, at a retro bar styled on communist-era drinking dens, with herring and pickles.

3 hours for the castle and cathedralBook ahead

Climb Wawel Hill to the castle where Polish kings lived and the cathedral where most of them were crowned and buried.

2 hoursTimed entry

Walk through Kraków under German occupation, 1939 to 1945, in the factory where Oskar Schindler employed and protected Jewish workers.

3 hours or moreBook ahead

The war told from a broad international perspective, not only Poland's, in a vast exhibition 14 metres under the city where it began.