Luxury hotel holidays to Poland

Poland - Frequently Asked Questions

Poland is not the most obvious European holiday destination. What draws visitors there, and what should we expect?

Poland consistently surprises clients who arrive without strong preconceptions, and that quality of surprise is itself part of what makes it rewarding. The country has a history of extraordinary weight and complexity — the medieval kingdom, the partitions, the extraordinary destruction of the Second World War, the communist decades, and the remarkable recovery since 1989 — and that history is present in the streets and architecture of its cities in a way that provokes genuine thought. Kraków is the most immediately beautiful Polish city: its medieval old town, the largest market square in Europe, the Wawel Castle and Cathedral on the hill above the Vistula, the Kazimierz Jewish quarter — all of it remarkably intact and alive with daily life. Warsaw tells a different story: a city almost entirely destroyed in the war and subsequently rebuilt, with the reconstructed Old Town and Royal Castle alongside the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science and the bold, contemporary architecture of a city that has remade itself with considerable confidence. Between them they offer a compressed and absorbing introduction to one of the most historically significant countries in Europe — one that most British visitors find more affecting and more interesting than they had anticipated.

What does Kraków offer, and how long does it warrant?

Kraków warrants at least two full days and rewards three. The old town — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is one of the best-preserved medieval city centres in central Europe, and the Rynek Główny, the great market square at its heart, is genuinely among the finest public spaces on the continent: surrounded by merchant houses, the Gothic Cloth Hall, and the towers of St Mary's Basilica, and animated at all hours by the life of the city. Wawel Hill, above the river, carries the Royal Castle and Cathedral — the burial place of Polish kings and of national heroes including Kościuszko and Piłsudski — and commands views over the Vistula that give a clear sense of the city's geography and history. The Kazimierz district, the former Jewish quarter, has a melancholy beauty and a cultural significance that makes it an essential part of any visit; the synagogues, the cemeteries, the pre-war street pattern are all there, and the neighbourhood has also developed into one of the most characterful parts of the city for restaurants and cafés. For those who want to understand the full weight of what Kraków carries historically, the Wieliczka Salt Mine — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of extraordinary scale and strangeness, with underground chapels carved entirely from salt — is forty minutes away by local train, and Auschwitz-Birkenau is an hour to the west, a site that many visitors feel compelled to include and that requires half a day and a degree of preparation.

Warsaw is often overlooked in favour of Kraków. Is it worth including, and what does it offer?

Warsaw is worth including, and the contrast with Kraków is part of what makes a trip to Poland coherent rather than simply a visit to one city. Where Kraków was spared the worst of the wartime destruction, Warsaw was almost entirely levelled — by the German bombardment of 1939, by the systematic destruction that followed the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and by the deliberate demolition of what remained. The city that exists today is in large part a reconstruction and a reinvention, and that gives it a very different character: more open, more architectural in a twentieth-century sense, more forward-looking. The reconstructed Old Town and Royal Castle are remarkable achievements — rebuilt from paintings, photographs and collective memory — and the Royal Castle now houses a serious art collection. Beyond the old town, the Palace of Culture and Science, a Stalinist skyscraper gifted by the Soviet Union and long a contested symbol of the communist era, dominates the skyline and is now embraced with a degree of ironic affection. The Chopin Museum, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews — one of the finest museums of its kind in Europe — and the Warsaw Rising Museum are all institutions of real quality. Warsaw is also a lively, contemporary city with good restaurants and a vigorous cultural scene, and it works well as a final two or three nights before a return flight home.

How do you travel from the UK to Poland, and is it possible to go entirely by train?

Poland is reachable entirely by train, and that is how most of our Poland holidays begin — at least in the outward direction. The standard rail route takes the Eurostar from London St Pancras to Brussels, continues east by fast train through Cologne and Berlin, and then onward to Kraków or Warsaw. Berlin is the natural overnight stop, both because it breaks the journey at a logical point and because it is a destination in its own right — and indeed our thirteen-night rail tour of Germany, Czech Republic and Poland begins in Berlin precisely for that reason. Warsaw is around six hours from Berlin by direct train; Kraków is reached via a change in Warsaw or via Prague, with the Prague to Kraków leg taking around seven hours directly. For the return journey, flying from Warsaw back to the UK is a practical and time-efficient option — we structure many of our Poland itineraries to travel out by rail and return by air from Warsaw, which gives the journey a satisfying sense of direction rather than retracing the route. For those who prefer to fly both ways, Warsaw and Kraków both have good connections from UK airports.

Poland features in your wider central European rail tours. How does it fit alongside Germany and the Czech Republic?

Poland sits naturally at the eastern end of our central European rail programme, and the thirteen-night tour combining Germany, Czech Republic and Poland is the itinerary that ties these countries together most coherently. The progression — Berlin and Dresden in Germany, Prague in the Czech Republic, Kraków and Warsaw in Poland — follows a geographical and historical logic: these are cities that shaped, and were shaped by, the same extraordinary sequence of events across the twentieth century, and travelling between them by train gives a sense of that shared history playing out across the landscape. The rail journeys themselves are part of the experience: the Elbe valley between Dresden and the Czech border, the approach to Prague with its cathedral towers on the horizon, the long run east from Prague to Kraków through the Polish countryside. For clients who want a shorter introduction to Poland, it is possible to add Kraków as a final stop to a Germany and Czech Republic itinerary — three or four nights there makes a satisfying conclusion to a ten or eleven-night tour. We build the itinerary around the client's interests, pace and available time, and Poland can be weighted accordingly.