Kraków fits in a weekend. What sits around it does not.
Which Auschwitz-Birkenau visit includes an educator and which is a coach seat. What the salt mine costs once the transfer is in. Whether Zakopane is worth eleven hours in February. Reviews of every tour you can book in Kraków.
The four days a Kraków trip is usually built from.
What each one costs, how long it takes, and what travellers say when they get back.
01The day out westAuschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel PickupOświęcim is 70 km from the city. A guided visit covering both Auschwitz I and Birkenau takes most of the day, and the museum releases its entry slots on a fixed calendar.
02A hundred metres downWieliczka Salt Mine TourWieliczka has been cut for salt since the thirteenth century. The tourist route is eight hundred steps down past chapels, brine lakes and a ballroom carved out of the rock.
03The half day on footOld Town Krakow & Wawel Castle Walking TourRynek Główny, the Cloth Hall arcades, then up Wawel Hill. Two and a half hours covers the medieval core, and everything else in Kraków hangs off it.
04The mountain dayZakopane, Thermal Springs, Cable Car, Local TastingEleven hours south: the Gubałówka funicular, sheep-milk cheese off a stall, and the thermal pools at Chochołów on the way back.
Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau from Kraków.
Every Auschwitz-Birkenau review →
The State Museum sits at Oświęcim, seventy kilometres west of the city, and almost everyone who goes there goes from Kraków. Entry is by booked slot, the two sites are three kilometres apart, and how you arrange the day decides how much of it you spend on a bus.
- Entry is timed
- The museum caps admissions and opens its calendar months ahead. Guided entries in July and August are gone weeks before the date.
- Two sites, one visit
- Auschwitz I holds the exhibitions; Birkenau, three kilometres on, is the scale of the place. A shuttle runs between them and a full visit needs both.
- Allow the whole day
- Pickup in Kraków, roughly three and a half hours on site, and the drive back puts most tours at eight to ten hours door to door.
Six places a week in Kraków gets spent.
A medieval square you can cross in four minutes, a quarter across the river with two histories on the same six streets, a mine, a memorial and the Tatras two hours south. Where to begin in each.
Kraków is a walking city with a fortress at one end of it.
Everything in the Old Town →Rynek Główny is the largest medieval square in Europe and you can cross it in four minutes. The Cloth Hall runs down the middle of it, the trumpet call comes off St Mary’s tower every hour, and Wawel closes the southern end above the river. Three ways to take it in.
Rynek Główny, then up Wawel Hill
The square, the Cloth Hall arcades, St Mary’s, then the climb to the castle and cathedral. Guides differ mostly on whether Wawel entry is included or you queue for it yourself.
The medieval market, four metres down
Excavation under the Rynek left the eleventh-century trading level open, with the cellars, cart ruts and coin scales in place. Numbers are capped, so it rarely works as a same-day plan in summer.
Wawel from a deck on the Vistula
An hour upstream and back under the castle bluff. The evening sailings are the ones worth the ticket, when the brick goes orange and the bridges light.
Salt, mountains and hot water: the three day trips south.
Kraków sits inside easy reach of a working salt mine, the Polish Tatras and a run of thermal pools fed from under them. Three kinds of day out of the city, what each asks of your morning, and what it costs to board.
The Kraków tours travellers take most.
Every review we have written →Inside the city, these carry more travellers than anything else: the walks off the square, the cellars, the river and the enamel factory across the bridge.
1
Oskar Schindler’s Factory Entry Ticket & Guided Tour
Review of Krakow’s Schindler Factory tour, with skip-the-line entry, expert guides, wartime exhibits, price, tips, and City Pass advice.
From · $35
Read our review →
2
City Sightseeing Tour by Electric Golf Cart
from $13
3
Schindler’s Factory Tour with Entrance Ticket
from $49
4
Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert Hall
from $18
5
Wawel Castle & Cathedral Guided Tour
from $57
6
Sightseeing Cruise by Vistula River
from $20
7
Schindler’s Factory & Ghetto Guided Tour
from $57
8
Pub Crawl + Unlimited Drinks + VIP entry + Drinking Games & Photographer
from $36
What a day out of Kraków actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. Poland is cheap by western European standards and it shows here — a good number of these days out come in under the price of dinner.
Walking tours off the square, museum entries, the river hour and most single-site tickets.
The full-day standards: the memorial with transport, the mine, Zakopane and the combined days.
Private guides, vintage-car days in Nowa Huta and the chartered runs that carry a whole group.
Three things that only happen in Kraków.
Old towns and mountain funiculars exist all over central Europe. A trumpet call that stops mid-note, a cathedral cut out of salt, and a steel town built to argue with the city next door do not.
The hejnał from St Mary’s
A trumpeter climbs the taller tower of St Mary’s and plays the same short call to each of the four compass points, every hour, all year. It breaks off mid-phrase. The city has kept the broken ending since the story went round that a Mongol arrow found the player’s throat, and the noon call goes out live on Polish radio.
- 1Private Krakow Tour: St. Mary’s, Cloth Hall & More★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 60 reviews
- 2St. Mary’s Basilica and more – a short walk with a guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 56 reviews
- 3Wawel Castle, Cathedral, Old Town and St. Mary’s Basilica★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 13 reviews
The chapel cut out of salt
Miners at Wieliczka carved St Kinga’s Chapel out of a single chamber of rock salt over sixty-odd years — floor tiles, altarpieces, a relief of the Last Supper and chandeliers whose crystals are salt washed and recast. It is fifty-four metres long, a hundred and one metres down, and mass is still said in it.
- 1Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 9,393 reviews
- 2Auschwitz-Birkenau and Salt Mine Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 9,020 reviews
- 3Wieliczka Salt Mine Guided Tour with Transport★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 7,429 reviews
Nowa Huta
In 1949 the state put a steelworks and a town for a hundred thousand people six kilometres east of a city it considered too bourgeois to reform. Nowa Huta got boulevards on a Renaissance plan, a nuclear shelter under every block and no church for thirty years. The residents built one anyway, and it became a place the strikes started.
- 1Nowa Huta Guided Tour in Vintage Car★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 277 reviews
- 2Legendary Private Nowa Huta Communism Tour with Crazy Guides★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 262 reviews
- 3Nowa Huta: Steelworks Administration Buildings/Shelters Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 160 reviews
Four Kraków bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be settled the night before over a beer in a cellar. These four run on capped admissions, timed staircases and small rooms, and they take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel PickupThe museum caps how many people it admits each day and opens its calendar months ahead. Summer guided entries go weeks before the date.
- 02Wieliczka Salt Mine TourVisitors go down in timed groups on a single wooden staircase, so the mine sells slots rather than tickets. Weekends fill first.
- 03Rynek Underground Museum Guided TourNumbers under the square are capped to protect the excavation, and the tours run to a fixed group size. Same-day entry rarely works in summer.
- 04Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert HallThe recitals are played in small halls — a couple of hundred seats at the largest, often far fewer.
It is dark by four in December. Go underground.
From November the light is gone by mid-afternoon and the square is cold enough to hurt. It is the wrong season for a long outdoor walk and the right one for everything Kraków keeps below ground or behind a door: the excavation under the Rynek, the mine, the cellars, and hot water two hours south.
Kazimierz carries two histories on the same six streets.
Seven synagogues stand within a few hundred metres of each other, several still in use. Over the bridge in Podgórze the ghetto walls and the chair memorial on Plac Bohaterów mark where the same community was moved in 1941, and Schindler’s enamel works is a short walk on. Guides here take it slowly, and they should.
Every Kazimierz walk →
The night in Kraków starts in a cellar.
The buildings round the Rynek are built over vaulted brick cellars, and most of them are bars. The density is the point — you can cross four in an hour without leaving the square. Vodka is poured cold and neat, and there is a piano recital going on somewhere every night of the week.
By place — the city and the belt around it
By kind of day — on foot, underground, in the mountains
How most people spend a long weekend in Kraków.
Under the RynekThe newest Kraków tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Schindler’s Factory, Ghetto and Plaszow Camp Guided Tour
Read our review →
River Cruise & Guided Visit to Former Plaszow Camp
Read our review →
Wawel Castle Treasury & Armoury Skip the Line Private Tour
Read our review →
Old Town short walk with St. Mary’s Basilica visit
Read our review →
Krakow City SightSeeing hop on hop off bus and city game
Read our review →
