← The Wander Atlas

Poland

6 places
Poland was wiped clean off the map for over a century and rebuilt itself each time, most starkly after the Second World War, which began on its soil and destroyed its cities; Warsaw's old town is a meticulous reconstruction of what the bombs took. It runs from Baltic dunes to the Tatra peaks, over…

The South (Kraków & the Tatras)3 places

WrocławTown · ●●●●●Poland's most cheerful big city: a rebuilt market square of colour-blocked merchant houses, a dozen islands stitched…
Kraków & WieliczkaTown · ●●●●○Poland's old royal capital, one of the few big Polish cities the war left standing, with a vast medieval square, a…
Zakopane & the TatrasNature · ●●●●○Poland's only alpine range, packed into a small border massif of granite peaks and glacial lakes, with a wooden…

The Centre (Warsaw & Poznań)2 places

Warsaw's Old TownTown · ●●●●○A picturesque medieval old town that is barely eighty years old, rebuilt brick by brick from paintings and rubble after…
ToruńTown · ●●●○○A red-brick Gothic town on the Vistula that the war never touched — Copernicus was born in it, it has been making the…

The North (the Baltic & the Lakes)1 place

Białowieża ForestNature · ●●●●○One of the last surviving fragments of the primeval lowland forest that once blanketed Europe, and the home of the…