Poland has had a tumultuous history over the past 1000 years. Its invasion by the Nazis in 1939 triggered World War II and the major concentration camps were hidden in its south. After decades as a Soviet satellite, Poles asserted their freedom with leaders like Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa of the Solidarity union. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022, 24 million refugees have passed through Poland, which has provided 1.8 million with temporary protection (second among all nations relative to its population). Today, the capital of Warsaw is an economically dynamic, clean, middle class city.
Now Poland is being recognized as the best overlooked European destination by Rick Steves and CNN. You can create your own marvelous trip using the DK Eyewitness Poland guidebook and the official visitor site https://www.poland.travel/en/ (if you want help from a Polish American travel agent check https://www.spata.org/index.php/about-us). We stayed at Warsaw's Hotel H15 Boutique, one of the world's best. See our in-depth review: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/review-h15-boutique-hotel-warsaw-scott-s-smith-qwbff/
DAY ONE: WARSAW RESURRECTED @go2warsaw @polska.travel #VisitPoland @DiscoverWarsaw
You can inexpensively get around Warsaw on mass transit. You can use Google Maps if you have an international plan on your phone or buy a SIM card from any convenience store. We primarily utilized the inexpensive and reliable FreeNow taxis. Poles are very friendly and eager to help with directions (the younger ones tend to speak English).
The Warsaw tourism office https://go2warsaw.pl/ referred us to our fabulous guide, Iza (www.warsawguide.info), who offers a wide variety of options. She led us through Old Town which was destroyed during World War II, but reconstructed using the identical original materials, so UNESCO includes it among Poland's 17 World Heritage sites. The path had been the moat between walls built in the 14th-16th centuries. Market Square is in colorful buildings from the same period, now full of cafes and shops (photo 1). St. John's Cathedral, the city's oldest church rebuilt in a Gothic style, was where some royal coronations and weddings occurred. The Royal Castle, the residence of monarchs from 1598, is full of treasures like enormous paintings (photo 2 is of one king's throne) and it has a display of Poland's constitution of 1791, the second-oldest after America's. After lunch at the delightful Restauracja Syrena we dropped by the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Museum in the building where she was born to see exhibits on her pioneering work on radioactivity that earned two Nobel Prizes (other Polish high-achievers included astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and novelist Joseph Conrad).
DAY TWO: WARSAW RISING
We started with Wilanow Palace (photo 3) south of the city center, a Baroque building set in beautiful gardens. It is now home to great works of art and there are audiotours.
The Fryderyk Chopin Museum is dedicated to the life and works of Poland's most famous composer and is one of Warsaw's most visited museums, with four floors featuring manuscripts, personal effects, and the grand piano he used to compose in the last two years of his life.
The Warsaw Uprising Museum is a multimedia center documenting the 1944 uprising of the 60,000 Jews in their 1.3 square mile ghetto that once held 450,000.The battle lasted 63 days and the survivors were sent to concentration camps (photo 4 is of a British bomber that supplied the revolt).
The National Museum is Poland's most important art museum, with a collection of 830,000 works as far back as antiquity, including European and Polish masterpieces, such as "The Battle of Grunwald" painted in 1878 by Jan Matejka, depicting the victory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth over the Teutonic knights (photo 5 is of one of our favorites , Roelant Savery's 1628 oil "Noah's Ark").
For the best view of the city, go up to the platform at the Palace of Culture and Science.
DAY THREE: AUSCHWITZ-BIRKINAU
You should spend two days in the south, but not understanding the time required we had only scheduled one, so we had to leave at 4 am for a 2.5 hr train ride to the medieval capital of Krakow and a 90 min. bus to the most infamous Nazi camps: Auschwitz (slave labor, medical experiments, administration) and next to it Birkenau (where 1.3 million were killed) https://www.auschwitz.org/en/ . These require 3.5 hours for a guided tour, including the museum (photo 6 of the gate "Arbeit Macht Frei" promised prisoners they might gain freedom by working hard). Reservations need to made well in advance and arrive early for the security check and a scheduled tour in English. It's better to spend the first day traveling and seeing things in Krakow (we were back in Warsaw at 10 pm thanks to our agent Rio Circleotrip.com). Together the camps could hold 90,000, but when the Germans realized they were being defeated they destroyed much of the evidence of what they had done and forced 56,000 to evacuate, many of whom died along the way. When the Soviets entered in Jan. 1945 they found 7000 survivors. "A Real Pain" won the Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay Oscars in 2025 as an improbable comedy-drama about cousins who take a Jewish heritage tour, including Holocaust sites in Poland, where it was filmed.
We know from talking with other visitors that Poland is a very beautiful country, so hopefully you can give it the time it deserves before everyone else discovers it.