Things to Do in Krakow

Built around 1870, the tenement house at No 7 Kościelna Street where the Holy Father John Paul II was raised has been operating as a papal museum since 1984. Visitors may take a trip through different stages of the Holy Father’s life by touring the multimedia exhibition that invites reflection and shows what the climate and life was like in pre-war Wadowice. The museum attracts 300,000- 400,000 visitors each year to tour the few rooms in which John Paul was born and raised. The tour begins on the ground level and ascends by ramps to the top of the museum. The two main rooms of the original home are the central focus of the museum, with the multimedia exhibit constructed lovingly around them. The museum includes personal items that were meaningful in John Paul’s life, including the Vatican clock (which was stopped at the moment of his death) and the Polish bible, which was read to him by the sisters in his final moments.

Insider’s Tip: Be sure to try John Paul’s favorite cream cake (Kremowka), which can be found in most of the town’s bakeries and cafes.

Chocolow is a tiny village sitting on the border with Slovakia in southern Poland with a great view of the surrounding Tatras Mountains. Dating back to the 16th century, the village has long been home to the indigenous Goral people and today represents the most complete survival of a traditional Goral village. As such, it has the feeling of an open air museum, with one main street lined with traditional wooden houses. The houses are protected by the Tatra Museum in nearby Zakopane and cannot be altered. They are also kept in pristine condition, with annual cleaning and polishes. The home at #24 is said to have been made entirely from a single tree, and the home at #75 features a small museum about the 1846 uprising in Chocholow against Austrian rule.

The only non-wooden building in town is St. Hyacinth’s Church, a stone Gothic church that was built to replace a wooden one in the 19th century. Next to the church is a monument to the Chocholow insurgents from the 1846 uprising, from where a hiking trail begins leading up to Mount Gubalowka.

In March 1941, thousands of Krakow’s Jews were forcibly moved and incarcerated within the Podgórze ghetto south of Kazimierz. Plac Zgody, a large square in the heart of the ghetto, was the departure point during World War II for Jews boarding trains to Paszów, Auschwitz and various other camps. It has since been renamed Ghetto Heroes Square in honor of the Jewish deportees.

Today the entire square serves as a memorial to the Krakow Jews. Designed by local architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Latak, the memorial comprises 70 empty chairs placed at regular intervals throughout the open space — a chilling reminder of the furniture, luggage and other personal belongings that littered the square after the final deportations and razing of the ghetto in 1942 and 1943.

Sitting in the foothills of the rugged Carpathian Mountains southwest of Krakow, the town of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska grew up to accommodate pilgrims who flocked to the red-roofed and copper-domed complex of religious buildings that still dominates life there to this day. Built in the 17th century, the ornate Baroque Sanctuary of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska provided Catholics with a substitute Chapel of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, which at that time was under Turkish rule and firmly off limits to Christians; it incorporates the Franciscan Bernardini Monastery alongside 42 chapels and churches all beautifully sited on pathways among woodland and symbolizing the Stations of the Cross at Calvary. 

In Polish religious life, only the Shrine to the Black Madonna at Częstochowa is more important than Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, which is UNESCO World Heritage listed for its sheer, breathtaking Baroque beauty, all created by Italian architect Giovanni Maria Bernardoni and his Flemish counterpart Paolo Baudarth. The fanciful, twin-spired main basilica is dedicated to Our Lady and its Chapel of Holy Mary of Calvary holds a highly revered icon of Mary and Jesus; the faithful gather there in thousands to see passion plays on Good Friday and celebrate on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption. Pope John-Paul II was born 15 km (9.25 miles) away in Wadowice and made several visits to the shrine when he returned to his homeland; his statue stands near the entrance to the basilica.

The town around the sanctuary has been known for the skill of its woodworkers since the mid 18th century; today more than 1,500 artisan cabinetmakers work among a population of 4,500 in total.

Opened in 2000 in a handsome, red-brick former Austrian barrack dating from 1911, the Home Army Museum is a vital stop for anyone interested in Poland's role in World War II. The museum chronicles the story of the Polish Underground Movement and its armed resistance through to its official disbanding in 1945. While it operated, the Home Army was the most effective underground organization in occupied Europe and contributed significantly to the Allied war effort.

Among nearly 20,000 artifacts on display—mostly donated from veteran resistance fighters or their families and including propaganda posters, weapons, uniforms, memorabilia and documents—the museum displays an enormous collection of personal testaments, graphic images, documentaries and live war footage shot during WWII, all exhibited with the aid of innovative multimedia and interactive displays.

Entrance to the Home Army Museum is free with a Krakow museum and transport pass, which includes unlimited public transportation and admission to the city's top museums.

Entirely dedicated to honoring Holocaust victims and celebrating Jewish culture of the former Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia through photographs, this museum features poignant and contemporary exhibits that will leave no one indifferent. It highlights a time in Poland when the Jewish community flourished, choosing to focus on what was and what remains, rather than on what was annihilated. The main exhibition, called Traces of Memory, presents the work of photojournalist Chris Schwarz and depicts what is left of the Austro-Hungarian’s heritage through photographs of cemeteries, houses, synagogues and other structures that are still visible today, and that once were at the heart of the Galician Jewish community; it also features video testimony of survivors. Additionally, the Museum also hosts two to three temporary exhibitions as well as concerts and other commemorative events. Through its various exhibits, cultural center, and impressive Jewish library, the museum has been aspiring to transform the misconceptions about the Jewish heritage in Poland ever since it’s opening in 2004.

The focal building of Krakow’s fanciful Main Square (Rynek Główny), the Cloth Hall has stood in the same spot in various forms for about 800 years but was originally built to house the local textile traders. From its humble beginnings as a small open-air market, the Renaissance-style hall is now 354 feet (108 meters) long and hosts Krakow’s biggest and best souvenir market, with stalls on the ground floor selling painted eggs, amber jewelry, wooden puppets and organic goods. The hall is gloriously floodlit by night.

On the first floor of the Cloth Hall is the charming, revamped Gallery of 19-Century Polish Art (Galeria Sztuki Polskiej XIX wieku w Sukiennicach). It reopened in 2010 after an extensive facelift, and its artwork hangs in elegant Renaissance salons. The highlights are the two massive satirical works by Polish nationalist artist Jan Matejko.

Well below ground and actually constructed underneath the Cloth Hall, a fairly new addition to Krakow’s museum scene is the Podziemia Rynku (Rynek Underground). Romping through Krakow’s turbulent backstory from prehistory to modern day, the high-tech museum uses interactive displays, special effects, informative touchscreens and holograms to engage the public. After some five years of construction, during which time the Main Square was partially under cover, the museum finally opened in 2010. 

Jasna Góra Monastery is one of the largest Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world. Located in Częstochowa, Poland, the monastery is home to the famous Black Madonna of Częstochowa, or the Our Lady of Częstochowa, a four-foot-high Gothic painting displaying the Virgin Mary. Legend has it that Luke the Evangelist completed the iconic painting, and it is further purported that the painting was done on a tabletop built by Jesus himself and that it was discovered by St Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine. 

On average, 14,000 people visit the monastery each day to see the Black Madonna, a painting credited with several miracles, including the saving of the monastery during a 17th-century Swedish invasion. It is believed that the original painting was a Byzantine icon dating back to sometime between the 6th and 9th centuries. During a 15th-century restoration, it was painted anew, as the restorers were not able to apply tempera colors over the wax paint.

A UNESCO World Heritage site, the building has many remarkable features, including a 70-foot-long chandelier in the lobby (the longest in Europe), a Gothic pillar on the first floor and a 17th-century polychrome on the second floor. It was opened as a hotel in 2007 and has been named the best luxury hotel in Poland. The palace is perfectly situated to explore Krakow as it is within walking distance of a number of important attractions, including the Czartoryski Museum, the Collegium Maius building of Jagiellion University, the Dominican Church, the Franciscan Church and the Barbakan fortress. The palace windows also provide an exceptional view of St. Mary’s Basilica, Cloth Hall, St Wojciech Church and the Adam Mickiewicz monument. 

Often regarded as one of Poland’s finest artists, Jozef Mehoffer (who also happened to be a pupil of Jan Matejko) was a highly talented stained-glass artisan, whose works can now be admired in numerous churches in both Krakow and across Galicia. This is the house where he used to live and work until his death in 1946, along with other artists of the Young Poland movement at the turn of the 20th century. 

The house is still decorated with Mehoffer’s tasteful Art Deco furniture, Japanese treasures, iconographic trinkets, and impressionist artworks; as such, it offers an authentic glance of what life was like in a bourgeois house at the time, kind of like a time capsule. The house itself is in remarkable condition and features hundreds of rose bushes; in fact, the Jozef Mehoffer House is known for its beautiful garden-café, Meho Café, one of Krakow’s best kept secrets.

With 14 outposts scattered across the city, Krakow’s Historical Museum (Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa) is headquartered at Krzysztofory Palace in the Old Town’s central square of Rynek Główny. This glorious 17th-century Baroque townhouse and its ornate stucco decor has been refurbished, and now houses a permanent exhibition on the urban development of the city. Look out for the portraits of civic leaders and a famous collection of traditional Krakovian Christmas cribs (called szopki in Polish). Another recent addition is the museum store full of beautiful coffee-table books and textiles.

Branches of the museum include the interactive displays of the Rynek Underground (Podziemia Rynku), also in the Rynek Główny; the Oskar Schindler Factory; the Barbican; the Old Synagogue in Ulica Szeroka and the Communist-built suburban town of Nowa Huta. There are several themed cycling trails— bikes can be borrowed from the museums—and walking routes uniting the venues across the city; the most popular of these is the Memory Trail, which incorporates the Schindler Factory, Eagle Pharmacy and the former Gestapo headquarters in Pomorska Street. Together these three permanent exhibitions unfold the story of Krakow during World War II and the subsequent Soviet Occupation.

Explore the museum on a two-hour guided tour of Oskar Schindler's Factory Museum or visit multiple branches at your leisure with a two-day hop on, hop off bus tour including museum admission.

The Hipolit House is a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow, containing recreations of townhouse interiors from the 17th to early 19th century. The house represents a typical home in Krakow from this time period. The outside of the building has a grand facade with a central entrance hall. A narrow staircase takes visitors to the upper floors of the three story house. Visitors can still see carefully preserved stucco decoration by Baldassare Fontana from the late 17th century on the first floor. 

The permanent exhibition, Bourgeois House, shows how the interiors of the homes changed over the centuries. Visitors can see from this exhibition how the former wealthy citizens of Krakow lived. Furniture, paintings, fabrics, decorations, antique clocks and watches, and a variety of other objects show how the inhabitants arranged their homes. Through these details, visitors can get a glimpse of what life was like for the upper class during the 17th to early 19th century.

The Archdiocesan Museum of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was originally founded in 1905, although not opened to the public until 1994. It was created to commemorate and advise the public of the artistic legacy of the Krakow bishopric. The buildings at 19 and 21 Kanonicza street that house the museum date to the late 14th century and today contains more than 600 works of art displayed in 16 rooms. The late Pope John Paul II, formerly known as Karol Wojtyla, resided there once as a young priest and again when he was the Archbishop of Krakow. The museum was named after him in 2005 and visitors are able to see the room where he lived from 1958 to 1967, as well as many of his personal effects, including his skis.

Museum displays showcase a variety of sacral art from the 13th to 18th centuries, including religious artifacts, sculptures and paintings. There is also a treasury of gifts presented to Archbishop from foreign heads-of-state and a set of furniture from 1905. Temporary exhibitions occasionally feature the works of contemporary artists.

Krakow's CRICOTEKA Museum is a theater, exhibition space and bookshop dedicated to a bizarre brand of experimental theater and the local man who created it in 1955: avant-garde and controversial playwright, designer, director and artist Tadeusz Kantor. Visitors to the museum will walk through bizarre theater set designs with spooky mannequins, marionettes and costumes on display. There is also a gallery showing Kantor’s work in Ulica Sienna, which housed his theater company Cricot 2, as well as frequent temporary exhibitions of art inspired by his ideas.

Having moved its headquarters to the Podgórze district in 2014, the museum offers a modern piece of Polish cultural history in a clean, new and rarely crowded facility worth at least an hour's visit. Enjoy free admission to the museum and 40 other city attractions with a Krakow Museum and Transport Official Pass, including free, unlimited public transportation.

Founded in 1364, Jagiellonian University is the second oldest university in Central Europe. While it has survived to celebrate its 650th jubilee in 2014, its history has been turbulent. After briefly collapsing in 1370, it was revived in 1400, and in the early 16th century, it enjoyed a golden age in the midst of the Polish Renaissance. However, the prestige of the university eventually declined as Poland’s position in Europe got worse and the country was partitioned multiple times. After nearly closing in the 19th century, the university then hosted major scientific achievements. It was then targeted by the Nazis, who sent dozens of faculty members to concentration camps and destroyed university libraries and laboratories. Jagiellonian continued to suffer under Communism, and it wasn't until Poland’s Communist government was overthrown that the university once again began to flourish. Today it is considered one of the top universities in all of Europe.

Most notable for visitors to the university is the Collegium Maius building, home to the Jagiellonian University Museum, which boasts an impressive collection of old scientific instruments, university memorabilia and a portrait gallery of professors.

The very aptly named museum, which is located inside Krakow’s famous Cloth Hall, does indeed focus on 19th-century Polish art, with thousands of paintings and sculptures on display – thus making it the largest of its kind in the world. As it mainly consists of donations from local collectors and artists, the exhibit is rather small in size when compared to other national galleries in the world but is nonetheless quite significant in terms of Polish art. The various artworks are scattered across four different “19th-century salon”-themed halls, each named after a prominent Polish artist and defined by a specific historical period.

The Bacciarelli Room is all about Classicist, Rococo and even late Baroque painters such as Bacciarelli himself, Grassi and Krafft, with a strong emphasis on historical and battle scenes. The Michałowski Room is dedicated to Romanticism and Poland’s political scene at the time, with works from Artur Grottger, Piotr Michałowski, and Jan Nepomucen Głowacki, often regarded as the most outstanding landscape painter in Poland. The Siemiradzki Room revolves around nature, history, and mythology, and is dedicated to Henryk Hektor Siemiradzki, famous for his stunning portrayals of the Graeco-Roman world and the New Testament. Lastly, the Chełmoński Room is devoted to genre painting and Realism. It is notably more modern than the other rooms. 

Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s pharmacy in the heart of Podgórze ran quite smoothly until 1941 when the Nazis closed off the surrounding area and created a ghetto for the Jewish community. And although Pankiewicz was offered to move the Aryan side of the city at the time, he chose to stay in the ghetto, where he was able to supply the residents with medication and various pharmaceutical products that were not only used for health reasons but also to help them mislead the Gestapo; for example, many residents used hair dyes to disguise their identity, or even tranquilizers to keep children quiet during raids. The pharmacy itself was often used as a shelter to Jews who escaped deportation to the camps.

The pharmacy is now part of the Krakow Historical Museum and has been restored to its wartime appearance. Multimedia exhibits and various artifacts, as well as numerous testimonials from Holocaust survivors and Poles, inform visitors about the reality of life in the ghetto and the pharmacy’s role in a very intimate, hands-on way.

Welcome to Jan Matejko’s universe! The famous artist, counted among the most famous Polish painters, is celebrated for his vivid depictions of political and military events inspired from Polish history. Some of his most famous works include the Battle of Grunwald, Union of Lublin, Rejtan, as well as several portraits of Polish kings, which are exposed in various National Museums across Poland.

The three-story town house is where the painter used to work and live, and has been transformed into a biographical museum in the late 1800s, shortly after his death. The house is still adorned with artwork commissioned by Matejko himself, which is now particularly valuable, seeing as he was quite the collector. Hundreds of objects and trinkets that belonged to Matejko, collected throughout the years, make up the relatively small but highly significant collection – from his reading glasses to Renaissance furniture, and from antique firearms to books documenting his fascination for gargoyles.

Found in buzzing Kazimierz’s former town hall—itself a creamy-hued Renaissance masterpiece—Krakow’s superb Ethnographic Museum (Muzeum Etnograficzne) should be on everyone’s itinerary. The museum covers the history and culture of rustic Poland through the ages, with detailed reconstructions of 19th-century peasant rooms, schoolrooms and rural kitchens. The museum also has a fine collection of traditional musical instruments, colorful folk costumes and day-to-day utensils used in leather making, wood carving and farming. The highlight of a visit, however, is the display of ornately decorated Nativity cribs called szopki, which are traditionally painted red, green and gold and resemble multi-tiered Orthodox churches.

New permanent exhibitions are being curated, including displays on traditional Polish rituals such as the painting of Easter eggs and the delicate folding of paper flowers; another recent addition on the second floor of the museum contain more than 300 pieces of art spanning the last five centuries. A separate gallery for temporary exhibitions is found at Ulica Krakowska 46, which recently hosted an in-depth exploration of the customs and traditions of Polish weddings.