Krakow is the perfect destination for a city break. It’s Poland’s second city, full of art, history and cultural highlights. Krakow is also Poland’s most popular destination with current rates at around 16 million visitors a year. As a year-round destination, there is no quiet time to go to Krakow, so you really do need to plan well to make the most of your time in this incredible city. Here’s your guide to planning a successful weekend in Krakow, just not the stag party version!
Krakow is ‘perfectly Polish’, with not one, but 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, cobbled streets, a fairytale castle, Europe’s largest Medieval Square, delicious local cuisine, jazz clubs and beer gardens, a mix of architectural styles, and moving historical monuments and museums. It’s easy to understand why it’s Poland’s most popular city to visit.
With so much to see, there is a temptation to try and fit too much into your weekend in Krakow. For the purposes of this blog, I am assuming you have a three-night stay, which gives you 2 full days to explore, plus potential additional time on your arrival or departure day.
An example itinerary might be as follows:
| Day | Morning | Afternoon | Dinner | Evening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Travel to Krakow | Market Square | ‘Miod Malina’ | Nowa Prowincja |
| Day 2 | Half day tripWieliczka Salt Mine | Castle | ‘Under the Warwel’ | Boat trip, Vistula |
| Day 3 | Walking tourKazimierz | Schindler Factory and Podgorze | ‘The Black Duck’ | Jazz club |
| Day 4 | Half day tripAuschwitz-Birkenau | Travel home | N/A | N/A |
Feel free to move things around to suit your preferences.
Krakow holds around one-third of Poland’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including:
Luckily for Krakow, its historic centre survived intact during the bombing campaigns of World War II.
Once you’ve checked into your accommodation, it’s time to start exploring the cobbled streets lined with smart coloured townhouses. Quite quickly you’ll find yourself in Market Square (Rynek Glowny), Europe’s largest Medieval Square designed in 1257.
Rynek Glowny is the perfect place to start your weekend in Krakow, exploring everything on offer within the confines of this beautiful square, all 40,000 square meters of it. It was one of the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites awarded listed status back in 1978.
Take an hour to settle in and check your plans over a late lunch in one of the restaurants around the market square. May be try your first pierogies, Polish national dumplings. We had our first pierogies in Warsaw – very nice!
Note – Beware of the Stag parties which seem to congregate around the market square, so if you see a large group of lads sitting outside, pick a different restaurant to ensure a quieter lunch, and let the lads get on with enjoying themselves.
The Church of the Holy Virgin is a beautiful church on the market square has two spires of different heights. This 14th-century building is a stunning excellent example of Polish Gothic architecture with ornate interiors, the largest Gothic altarpiece in the world and a truly beautiful blue and gold ceiling.
Tip – make sure to be outside the church on the hour to hear the bugle signal called the Hejnał Mariacki played from the tallest tower to honour a medieval trumpeter once killed whilst sounding the alarm when Krakow was attacked.
The large Cloth Hall in the centre of the market square, is effectively a medieval shopping centre. That said, the building you see today isn’t the original building, but a renaissance rebuild from 1555, with arches around the exterior. Inside the Cloth Hall is full of market stalls where cloth and other goods were traded back in the day.
The Cloth Hall reminded me of The Piece Hall in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where handloom weavers sold pieces of cloth they had made, albeit in an Italian style piazza.
When Krakow’s market square was undergoing renovations, remains of the original marketplace (thousand year old) were found beneath the Cloth Hall. You can now visit this archaeological site, now an interactive, multi-media museum. Check out the ruins of the medieval market stalls, the sewage system, historical artefacts and even a section about vampire prevention burials at an 11th century church.
To be honest, we were a little underwhelmed despite the impressive scale of the excavations – I think it helps to have a good imagination to bring these things to life. However, don’t let me put you off, the museum is extremely popular and was recommended to me by two different people, so it might just have been the mood we were in when we visited?
Note the statue of Poland’s most esteemed poet, Adam Mickiewicz standing proudly in the square (1798-1855).
Ready to get your steps in (literally)? Then climb the 110 steps to the top of the 70-meter Town Hall Tower in the southwest corner of the square. This Gothic structure is the only surviving part of the original medieval Town Hall.
We commented that the staircase was the steepest, narrowest and most irregular staircase we’d climbed, before we read that the tower has a 55-centimeter lean, caused by a severe storm in 1703. Once at the top however, you are rewarded with good views over the market square and St Mary’s Basilica, although from behind glass as the tower is not open-air.
You need to watch your head as you climb the Town Hall Tower, especially if you’re very tall, as there are lots of low ceilings and places on the staircase to bang your head.
If you visit at one of the key annual holiday periods, such as Easter or Christmas, then the market square is likely to be full of craft and food stalls.
Look out for stalls around the market square selling Obwarzanek – baked goods which are a precursor to the bagel (first written about in 1394). Krakow consumes more than 200,000 Obwarzanek daily but always buy them in the morning whilst they’re fresh!
Want to rest your sightseeing legs? Then splash out on a horse and carriage ride around the Old Town. The horses’ bridles are decorated with colourful pom pom decorations, so they look very smart.
If you want to photograph the Market Square without people in your shots, then you'll need to get up early and pop back to the Square before everyone wakes up. Then you’ll only need to share it with the pigeons.
For traditional Polish menu options, book the restaurant Miod Malina, centrally located not far from Rynek Glowny. It has a cosy interior with vaulted roof serving dishes such as duck with plums and apple pancakes.
Nowa Prowincja was my favourite cafe of the weekend in Krakow. Its walls were covered in written messages, with open books attached to the wall and vintage clocks on the shelves.
Nowa Prowincja felt like a haunt for revolutionaries, but apparently, it’s where Polish poets and authors like to hang out. Much cherry vodka was consumed…
Wieliczka is a town located 14km southeast of Krakow and is home to an historic old salt mine which operated as a mine from the 13th century until 1996. The Wieliczka Salt Mine has been welcoming tourists since 1722 and is now one of Poland’s most popular attractions, with up to 10,000 visits per day. This UNESCO World Heritage Site must be experienced to be believed.
Book an organised trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine with transport from Krakow and tickets included. There are plenty of options on Get Your Guide, such as:
Alternatively, you can visit under your own steam by taking the train from Krakow Główny Station to the Wieliczka Rynek Kopalnia Station for just a few pounds (sterling). The trains leave every 15-20 minutes and take 24 minutes. Then it’s a short 5-minute walk to the entrance of the Salt Mines.
Note – you can’t enter the Salt Mine without a guide, so when you arrive you need to buy a ticket for an English-language tour. The advice is to go as early as possible as the Salt Mine frequently sells out, especially during peak seasons and afternoons; it opens from 8.00am until 18.00pm. The mine costs around £35.00 for the three-hour ‘Tourist tour’.
The Salt Mines are vast and comprise of 300 kms of paths and chambers. Luckily you will not be covering all of this on your visit, although you will walk a long way – 3.5km and a lot of stairs.
There are 9 levels in the mine, with 800 steps, tunnels and chambers; the deepest chamber is at 327 meters. The Tourist Route covers the first 3 levels and takes you to a depth of 135 meters. On your visit you will be shown:
A multitude of statues – Nikolaus Copernicus, monarchs, saints and even gnomes (something for the kids!).
Erazm Baracz Chamber and Underground Lake – 9 meters deep, 320 grams of salt per litre of water – denser than the Dead Sea.
The World’s largest underground chapel (Chapel of St Kings) – the miners carved it completely out of sodium between 1896 and 1964, including the ‘grand staircase’, chandeliers, ceiling, floors, alter piece, wall reliefs (including an impressive one of The Last Supper).
Stanislaw Staszic Chamber – 36 meter high. Once hosted an underground balloon flight.
The route is very atmospheric with faintly lit tunnels. At the end of the tourist route through the Salt Mine, you can take the high-speed elevator back up to ground level or carry onto visit the Underground Museum.
The tour of the mine is not suitable for anyone suffering from claustrophobia, or who has accessibility issues. Also, the temperature is always cool in mine, at a constant 17 degrees Celsius, so bring a warm layer with you if you visit.
After your half day visit to the Salt Mine, when you get back to Krakow, spend your afternoon exploring Wawel Hill and Wawel Castle. Sadly for me, I forgot to charge my camera battery overnight, so have no photos for this section, sorry!
Wawel Hill sits to the south of the Old Town, home to the Royal Castle from the days when Krakow was Poland’s capital city and the seat of Polish Kings and Queens for centuries. King Boleslaw I Chroby commissioned the first royal residency here in 11th century. Krakow ceased to be the Polish capital at the end of the 16th century.
Prebook your visit to Wawel Royal Castle as it gets very busy and you’ll want to benefit from explanations about the history of the State Rooms, private apartments, Treasury, Armoury and Wawel Cathedral.
Wawel Cathedral was where the Kings and Queens were coronated although it is not the original one, or even the second one, which both burnt down. It is also the resting place for royals.
Leave the Royal Castle complex via the Dragon’s Den, a dripping limestone cave and alleged home of Smok Wawelski (the Wawel Dragon). Legend has it that the dragon had an insatiable appetite for virgins. The King promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to the one who could slay the dragon. There is a bronze dragon statue here.
After your castle visit, enjoy an early dinner at Pod Wawelem (meaning ‘Under the Wawel’) a restaurant in Planty Park at the foot of the Royal Castle. Enjoy traditional, hearty and seasonal Polish dishes along with locals and tourists in a pleasant beer hall style environment – ‘Kompania Kfloawa’ means ‘beer mug company’.
Book a boat trip on the Vistula River for after your dinner, hopefully at sunset or when it’s dark to get the benefit of the buildings and bridges being illuminated. This seems to be one of the most popular tours on Get Your Guide for a weekend in Krakow, for example:
On our boat, you could sit downstairs and watch the sights float past, serenaded by 70s tunes on the speakers, or alternatively, sit upstairs on the open deck where the views were better (but was colder). The riverbanks were illuminated and the Castle looked lovely; the narration was more miss than hit, but after a couple of Cherry Dream cocktails, we didn’t care!
King Kazimierz founded Kazimierz in 1335, originally an independent market town, separate to Krakow; it sits to the southeast of the Old Town, outside the old city wall. Later as Krakow’s boundaries expanded, it became a district of the city.
Following a fire in the Old Town in 1495, Krakow’s Jewish population were resettled here around one area of Kazimierz, before growing and filling the neighbourhood. Before World War II there were 68,000 Jews in Krakow. Around 65,000 of Krakow’s Jews were killed by the Nazis during the war, only 3000 survived. Today, there are around 150 registered Jews living in Krakow, a tiny number.
Galicia (not to be confused with the area in Spain) is a major Historical area in Krakow. Galicia was the largest province of the Austrian Empire stretching from Krakow to western Ukraine. The area has a unique blend of Polish, Ukrainian, Austrian (Habsburg) and Jewish influences.
ou can explore Kazimierz on your own or book onto an organised tour, which I would recommend to get the most out of your visit. We booked a walking tour of Kazimierz through Get Your Guide, which included entry to Schindler’s FactoryMuseum.
Some of the walking tours run over lunchtime, so you might want to have a big breakfast beforehand to set you up for your activity.
Dajwor Kawy is located just around the corner from the Old Synagogue; a small neighbourhood cafe offering great breakfast options such as: shakshuka, halloumi and labneh on pitta, eggs and mushrooms on toast; all washed down with greatcoffee and fresh juices.
We met our tour guide on the steps outside the Old Synagogue; the area was very busy with lots of groups congregating so make sure you know who you are looking for.
The Old Synagogue is now a museum offering information about the key components of a synagogue, including Torah scrolls and pointers (so the scrolls can be read without touching them) and Bimah, the platform from which the Torah are read.
You can find the following locations around the square in front of the Old Synagogye in Kazimierz:
The Wolf Popper Synagogue (1620) is now a cultural centre and Judaica bookshop. An example of the repurposing of synagogues no longer used due to the reduced Jewish population in the neighbourhood.
The home of Helena Rubenstein – the cosmetic mogul who originally advised Polish women how to look after their skin, before making a name for herself in Paris and building a worldwide cosmetics company, one of the biggest in the 1980s. She brought the first waterproof mascara to market in 1939..
An old bathhouse for Orthodox Jews, now a bookshop and restaurant. It used to allow Orthodox Jews to take spiritual baths as required by their religion, for example, before visits to the synagogue.
Memorial to the 65,000 Jews of Krakow killed in the Holocaust, on a small pocket of grass in the square. It sits in an area which was once consecrated before the bodies were moved to a more secure site.
The seated statue of Jan Karski – a Polish soldier and resistance fighter who operated as a courier between 1940 and 1943 during WWII.
A row of shop fronts set up as they might have looked before WWII – the names look German as many Jewish people took German surnames to avert attention from themselves.
Leave the square and walk to Ul Meiselsa, the passageway used in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, Schindler’s List, as a stand in for the Jewish Ghetto (located in Podgorze); the film was based on the book ‘Schindler’s Ark’ by Thomas Keneally.
The Podgorze district lies south of Kazimierz, on the other side of the river. The two districts are connected by several bridges across the Vistula River. Cross over the Vistula River on the pedestrian bridge featuring lovely metal sculptures performing circus acts on the support structures of the bridge.
Don’t miss – As the bridge joins the Podgorze district, look for the small brass dragon sculpture holding a heart shaped padlock.
Podgorze was a formerly working-class suburb, but during World War II it became the Jewish Ghetto. In early March 1941, German orders came to establish a ghetto and forcibly resettle the city’s entire Jewish population within the ghetto walls. Around 15-20,000 Jews were forced to live in the ghetto, working as cheap labour in the factories within the ghetto boundary.
Many of these Jews were shipped off to forced labour camps between 1941 and 1943. When the ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, the remaining residents were either shot or deported to the camps.
Today, the area is managing a tricky balancing act – acknowledging the districts grim history through monuments and historical markers, whilst moving forward with the development of museums, cafes and businesses in its old industrial buildings.
A moving monument featuring 65 oversized metal chairs spread in lines across a large cobblestoned square, with each chair representing 1000 murdered Jews (65,000 in total). The square marks the entrance to the Ghetto, and whilst it was once a place for Jews to socialise outside their overcrowded housing, it was also a place of brutal beatings and summary executions.
On the southwest corner of Ghetto Heroes Square is a pharmacy where you can learn about the Pharmacist who risked his life to help the Ghetto Jews during WWII. The only non-Jew in the Ghetto, the pharmacist helped some Jews acquire false documents to avoid deportation. He also documented the grisly occurrences of the Ghetto.
Oskar Schindler was an Industrialist who bought an enamelware factory in 1939. He employed around 1,700 workers in his factory, over half of whom were Jewish workers brought in from the Ghetto as cheap labour.
When deportations of the Jews to the camps escalated, he used his connections in the Abwehr (German military intelligence service) to ensure his workers were not sent to the concentration camps. Ever increasing bribes were required to be made by Oskar to retain his workers. Eventually he effected a move for his factory out of the area, thus saving around 1,200 Jewish lives.
The museum moves through the timeline of the war: the pre-war years; the build-up to war, life under German occupation (1939-1945), the repression of the city’s Jewish residents, and the horrors of the deportation of Jews to the extermination camps.
To present this information, the museum successfully uses the personal recollections of Krakow residents and former factory workers; the stories are incredibly powerful. The museum also uses videos, photographs, excerpts from newspapers of the day and the sound of Wartime radio broadcasts in background-built tension.
It is an excellent museum, although technically not based in the enamel factory itself, but in the administration offices of the factory. The tour includes Oskar Schindler’s actual office.
Access to the museum is by timed slots. It’s advisable to book your museum tickets in advance, or to visit as part of a tour.
Enjoy some downtime from history and tours, with a relaxing stroll around the streets of Old Town Krakow, grabbing a coffee, resting your feet, and hunt for souvenirs in the small shops around Market Square – I left Krakow with two fantasticChristmas baubles from the shop, Adolf Knobel.
For a fun evening, head to The Black Duck for dinner. To make your visit quicker, book a table beforehand. There was a queue at one door for those who hadn’t booked, and a different entrance for those who hadn’t. It does help to like duck if you eat here, but other options are available.
Menu examples include fried duck dumplings with spicy sauce, roast duck with raspberry sauce and red cabbage, pork chop (like a schnitzel) with white cabbage, and a pulled pork burger – it was delicious, as were their Black Cherry cocktails!
Then, head to one of Krakow’s many jazz clubs, in the heart of jazz in Poland. If this is something you’d like to experience then pick one close to your accommodation so that you won’t have far to wander back ‘home’ afterwards.
If you wish to visit this powerful memorial, then plan to visit on a tour. Nothing can prepare you for the impact of this memorial, so brace yourself. The experience will stay with you, long after your visit.
Someone advised us to take the ‘combination tour’ visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau in the morning, and the Wieliczka Salt Mine in the afternoon, which is what we did. However, if I were to organise our trip again, I would visit them separately, for two reasons: (1) to allow downtime after the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau as it is heavy going, and (2) there is a lot of walking at the Salt Mines and so better to do it with fresh legs. This is why I’ve listed them separately on this suggested itinerary.
Only a 3–minute walk from Rynek Glowsny, pop into Collegium Maius at Jagiellonian University, Poland’s oldest surviving University founded in 1364 by King Casimir III The Great. The College has a 14th century clock which chimes at 9.00am.11.00am, 1.00pm and 3.00pm each day in the courtyard.
An excellent art museum near Florian’s Gate which was formed by Princess Izabela Czartoryski and opened in 1878. It holds Krakow’s richest art collection including the 15th century masterpiece, Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci (1489-90). Many of the paintings here were stolen by the Germans during WW II (including the da Vinci), buck luckily were recovered after the war.
For a fantastic collection of modern art, visit MOCAK which is located next to Schindler’s Factory in the Podgorzes area.
Krakow was protected by city walls and fortifications with 8 medieval gates, the most famous one being the Florian Gate at the start of the Royal Route. To learn more about this, and the city’s curved Barbican, you can visit the City Defence Walls Museum (part of the Muzeum Krakowa) – a seasonal, open-air museum allowing you to walk along a preserved 200-meter stretch of Kraków’s medieval fortifications. It showcases the history of the city’s 14th-century military engineering.
There is a 4 km (2.5 mile) ring of pretty parkland, called Planty Park, encircling the Old Town, so grab some picnic food and chill out in the shade of the park for an hour to recharge your sightseeing batteries.
The centre of Krakow, where you will spend most of your tine on a weekend in Krakow, is very flat and walkable, despite the wider city being large and sprawling.
However, if needed, the trams in Krakow are convenient and easy to catch.
At the end of your trip, the cheapest way to get to Krakow Airport is to catch the train from Kraków Główny station next to the Old Town, directly to the airport which leaves every half an hour and takes around 20 minutes. It only costs 20 PLN as opposed to around 120 PLN in a cab. That said, depending on where your accommodation is, catching an Uber or taxi may be preferable for convenience.
For more practical details about organising your trip, check out my blog about travel planning a double city break in Poland.
In closing
Krakow is truly beautiful and a fascinating place to visit. If I’m honest, the Stag parties did punctuate the magic at times – if you want to chill outside in a restaurant around the market square, then large groups of noisy stags are not the vibe. So, we tended to pick cafes and bars away from the market square where it was quieter.
However, there is no denying that Krakow is beautiful, full of old buildings and green spaces. As a lover of cherries, Krakow was perfect for me: shots of cherry vodka, Cherry Dream cocktails on the boat tour, and cherries with my roasted duck - I was spoilt!
I will be back with a charged camera to revisit the Wawel Castle at some point!
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