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14 Best Things to Do in Krakow for First-Timers (+5 Things We’d Skip)
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We’ve visited over 450 cities around the world, and Krakow isn’t one of our absolute favourites. In fact, we prefer Warsaw. It’s a little grittier, but we find it more interesting. Still, that doesn’t mean we’d tell you to skip Krakow!
Our first visit was a weekend getaway, and we recently returned for a full week to explore more of the city. Krakow is beautifully maintained, has a lovely Old Town and plenty to see and do.
Some of our favourite experiences included seeing an underground chapel carved entirely from salt, discovering the Old Town with a local guide and seeing Wawel Castle lit up from the river. Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was also one of the most emotional days of our travels.
After two visits, we’ve narrowed down the 14 best things to do in Krakow for first-time visitors, plus a few overrated attractions we think you can safely skip without missing out (including the inside of Wawel Castle).
Don’t miss these!
Our top picks for your Krakow trip
We didn’t expect tickets in Krakow to sell out as fast as in Europe’s big capitals, but they do. So book early, and you’ll have your pick of time slots. Here’s what we’d book again:
Top experiences in Krakow
- Wieliczka Salt Mine tour (our #1 pick; we loved walking through whole chambers made entirely of salt)
- Auschwitz-Birkenau guided tour (the day that taught us more than any history lesson; transport, entry and guide included)
- Evening Vistula River cruise (sells out most nights, magical views of Wawel Castle lit up on the water)
Where to stay in Krakow
- PURO Kraków Kazimierz (our top hotel choice; artsy Kazimierz on our doorstep and an excellent breakfast every morning)
- Vienna House by Wyndham Andel’s Kraków (great central location; the Old Town was a short stroll from our door)
Our top 14 picks for a first trip to Krakow
Many of the top things to do below are within walking distance of the Old Town. Others, like Nowa Huta and Kościuszko Mound, are a short tram or bus ride away.
The big day trips, Wieliczka and Auschwitz, need a tour or train, so we’d book those first and plan everything else around them.
1. Start with a walking tour of the Old Town
Krakow’s Old Town is lovely to wander on your own. But with a local guide, it suddenly makes SO much more sense.
We’ve joined walking tours in over 50 countries, and this was one of the best. Our guide on this Old Town tour mixed history and Polish culture with lots of humour.
He also knew details about the Krakow attractions we’d never have spotted on our own.
For example, there’s an iron collar on the wall of St Mary’s Basilica that was once used to publicly punish offenders. We’d have walked straight past it without a second glance!
He even pointed us to what became our favourite place to eat in Krakow (more on that below).
2. Go underground at the Wieliczka Salt Mine
A salt mine? We weren’t convinced either when we did our research. But when we saw photos of the chambers carved entirely from salt, we HAD to go. We loved it so much, we came back on our second Krakow trip.
Our guide had a tale about miners, dwarves or dragons at almost every stop, and half of them had us laughing out loud.
It’s a lot more polished than we’d imagined. The paths are wide and paved, and the lighting and music felt a bit Disney-ish. To be honest, we’d half expected helmets. Even so, it’s one of the must-visit places in Krakow.
The part we liked most was St Kinga’s Chapel. You walk down into a vast hall where the altar, the statues and the giant chandeliers are all salt. It’s hard to believe miners carved all of this by hand.
Our top tip: Book your tickets well in advance! You can only see the salt mine as part of a guided tour, and English slots are limited. We booked four weeks ahead and several were already gone. These are the tickets we booked, and they come with free cancellation up to 24 hours before, so booking early is risk-free.
If Auschwitz is on your list too and you only have a weekend, look at this salt mine and Auschwitz combo tour. It’s a long day, but it gives you the rest of your trip back for the city.
👉 This is the salt mine tour we’d happily do a third time.
3. Look up at the starry ceiling of St Mary’s Basilica
We’ve walked into a LOT of Gothic churches on our travels… most feel dark inside. St Mary’s is the total opposite.
The ceiling is deep blue with gold stars, and the walls and stained glass windows are full of colour. Walking in felt like opening a jewellery box.
As one of Europe’s most Catholic countries, Poland has churches everywhere. This is the one we liked most.
The Gothic altarpiece impressed us less than the colours. Those make St Mary’s a must-see, and only La Sagrada Familia beats it in our book.
Oh, and if you’re there on the hour, listen out for the trumpeter. The first time we heard the tune stop mid-note, we thought something had gone wrong. Legend says a watchman was shot while playing it.
4. Visit the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
As Germans, we learnt a lot at school about the Holocaust and the Nazis’ atrocities. Nothing prepares you for what happened here, though.
Walking through the camps was heartbreaking and humbling, and we’ll never forget that day. Everyone visiting Krakow should go.
You can get there by train (over an hour), then a local bus or a 20-25 minute walk. We chose this organised tour instead, starting from a meeting point in Krakow. Transport, entry and a guided tour of the camps are all included.
It’s a long, emotionally demanding day, so not having to organise anything was a relief. The guides explained everything with sensitivity and respect. Without that context, we’d have just seen fences and barracks.
Our top tip: If you only have one or two days, book this Auschwitz + salt mine combo tour. Both sites need timed tickets, and this one booking covers transport, entry and guides for each. It makes for a long, heavy day, but you won’t have to juggle two sets of time slots.
Since March 2026, tickets are no longer sold at the gate, so you need to buy them in advance. An organised tour handles that for you.
👉Here’s the tour we took, if you’d rather not plan the logistics of a day like this yourself.
5. Eat your way through Krakow
We could happily eat pierogi (Polish dumplings) every day. In Warsaw, we’d already eaten our body weight in them, and Krakow was no different.
But there’s so much more to try, like a zapiekanka (an open-faced baguette pizza) on Plac Nowy or a slice of sernik (Polish cheesecake).
These were the places we loved most across two Krakow trips:
Our top tip: With so many places to eat in Krakow, it’s hard to know where to start. Our guide on this Polish street food tour took us to traditional local producers and a market most visitors skip, then told us where to eat for the rest of our stay.
6. Explore Nowa Huta, a communist utopia
Nowa Huta was built in the 1950s as a model communist town, and it stayed a showpiece of the regime until 1989!
Viola was very keen to do this Nowa Huta walking tour. Sebastian was more sceptical. He pictured dreary grey tower blocks…
Admittedly, a planned communist district is partly that. But the tour was really interesting, and neither of us could stop asking questions (which our guide encouraged).
The guide was a historian who grew up there. He shared stories about how Polish people queued with ration cards to buy food, or how residents fought for years to get a church.
The planners had left one out on purpose, which tells you how unwelcome religion was.
We’d already been to communism museums like Prague’s Museum of Communism and Budapest’s Retro Interactive Museum.
But seeing Nowa Huta made that history far more real, and we think it’s one of the most eye-opening Krakow activities you can do.
7. Visit the factory behind Schindler’s List
You probably know Oskar Schindler from the film Schindler’s List, so we expected his actual factory to be all about him.
Only a small section is about him, though. Most of it covers Krakow under Nazi occupation through local people’s stories, and a couple of immersive rooms make the fear feel real.
It’s the best place in Krakow to understand the war, so come for that, not for Schindler.
Go before a ghetto tour if you can. The museum’s ghetto exhibits made our walk there far more vivid.
Our top tip: Book your tickets before you travel. Entry is by timed slot, and at the door we watched people being turned away. These Schindler’s Factory tickets also let you add a guided tour. There’s plenty to read in English, so we’d go without one, though a guide does help with the sheer amount of information.
👉 Get to know wartime Krakow through the people who lived through it.
8. Wander one of Europe’s largest medieval squares
Rynek Główny is where Krakow happens. On both our trips, the terraces on this 13th-century square were full and the place felt alive. It’s less cosy than smaller squares we’ve seen, but it’s made for people-watching over a coffee.
The Cloth Hall in the middle is the eye-catcher (inside, it’s mostly souvenir stalls).
Fair warning for anyone with a pigeon phobia… we’ve NEVER seen so many in one place! One man feeding them was completely covered in birds.
In winter, the square hosts the city’s Christmas market, said to be gorgeous. We haven’t been to Krakow in December yet, but once we go, it might just end up on our list of the best Christmas markets in Europe.
9. See Krakow light up from the river
The Vistula River is at its prettiest after dark, when the bridges and Wawel Castle (Krakow’s royal castle) are lit up.
There was one catch when we were there last time, though. We visited during a green midge invasion (green mosquito-like insects, in their millions).
During the day, we barely noticed them. After dark, they swarmed the brightly lit riverfront, and our evening stroll turned into a midge obstacle course.
We almost skipped this night cruise we’d booked. Luckily we didn’t, because out on the water there wasn’t a single midge. From the top deck, Wawel Castle glowed over the river, and we could have stayed out there all night.
👉 Discover Krakow from the river after dark, when the castle and bridges light up beautifully.
10. Tour the Jewish quarter and former ghetto
We stayed at the PURO Kraków in Kazimierz, Krakow’s historic Jewish quarter. These days it’s artsy and a little gritty, with a Camden or Brooklyn feel and loads of new cafés.
For the first few days of our trip, we kept passing tour groups and eavesdropping on their guides. The snippets we caught made us so curious that we finally booked this Jewish Quarter and former ghetto tour for our last day.
And we’re really glad we did. Our guide never rushed the hard parts, and a few gentle jokes along the way made such a heavy topic easier to take in. The tour covered the Jewish Quarter and the former ghetto in Podgórze across the river.
The best find in Kazimierz was an accident. We wandered into Księgarnia Austeria, a Jewish bookshop inside an old synagogue, and ended up browsing for ages. Its small courtyard felt a world away from the tour groups outside.
👉 Grab a spot on a guided walk through Kazimierz and the former ghetto.
11. Discover centuries of Polish traditions at the Ethnographic Museum
We LOVE open-air museums and visit one whenever we can.
There are a few around Krakow, but most are fairly small and hard to reach without a car. So we were thrilled to find the Ethnographic Museum. It’s like an open-air museum… just indoors.
After the ground floor, we thought we’d be done in under an hour. Then we found two more floors, and our visit turned into most of the afternoon.
The first rooms have life-sized 19th-century rural interiors that show how Polish families lived, and there’s even an old schoolroom. Upstairs, the traditional costumes are incredibly detailed, and we could have looked at them for ages.
We’d put it right up there with Schindler’s Factory, and it’s a real hidden gem that most visitors walk straight past.
12. Admire Collegium Maius, Poland’s oldest university building
Living in London, we’ve explored Oxford quite a few times. It’s home to one of the world’s oldest universities, so we were curious to see how Poland’s oldest compares.
That’s the Jagiellonian University, founded in 1364, and Collegium Maius is its oldest building.
Copernicus studied here, too. Standing in the same halls as the man who put the sun at the centre of the universe was high on our Krakow itinerary.
To be frank, the part you can visit is smaller than we expected. You see a handful of rooms, including the old library, the treasury and a professor’s apartment. Tickets are cheap, though, so it’s still worth it.
We spent the most time in the old dining hall. With a little imagination, you can picture it packed with noisy students centuries ago.
13. Walk through Florian’s Gate and the Barbican
This one won’t take you long. Krakow’s medieval walls are almost all gone, and Florian’s Gate and the Barbican are pretty much what’s left.
That said, walking through the gate everyone used centuries ago felt pretty special. It was sunny when we visited, and painters lined the inner wall selling their work.
We’d seen a similar barbican in Warsaw, but that one was rebuilt after World War II. Krakow’s is the REAL thing.
From the gate, Floriańska Street leads straight to the Main Square, and leafy Planty Park circles the Old Town where the walls once stood.
14. Climb Kościuszko Mound, a hill built for a national hero
Kościuszko Mound is a huge, man-made mound honouring a hero of both Poland and the American Revolution. It’s often left off lists of the top places to visit in Krakow.
We’d never seen a hill built as a monument, though, so we had to go.
The museum at the entrance is skippable, because the info boards in the open area explain the mound’s story far better.
From below, the mound looks harmless (it reminded us a bit of the royal tombs we saw in Gyeongju in South Korea). The spiral path gets a little steeper towards the top, and the drop seems to grow with every loop.
From the top, you can see the city of Krakow spread out below, with Wawel Castle and the Old Town spires in the distance. It’s an easy bus ride from the city centre, and we’re really glad we made the trip here.
One more for your Krakow list
If you have a spare hour or two, the Czartoryski Museum looked fascinating in every photo and video we saw. It’s home to Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, one of only four surviving portraits of women he painted. We ran out of time, but it’s top of our list for next time.
What we’d skip in Krakow
Not everything famous is worth your limited time. After two trips, these are the popular Krakow sights that didn’t live up to the hype for us, so you can spend those hours on the places above instead.
Wawel Castle & Cathedral
Wawel looks impressive from outside (especially at night), and the view from its terrace over the river is lovely. Though, inside it fell short of what we’d expect from the royal castle of Poland’s former capital.
When we went to buy tickets, there were around 20 different ones to choose from. That should have been our first warning.
We couldn’t decide, so we bought the all-in ticket and spent the entire day inside. Compared with Versailles, Schönbrunn or Windsor Castle, it was underwhelming. We kept waiting for a moment that would make the ticket worth it, and it never came.
We also preferred St Mary’s Basilica to the cathedral, which felt darker and more cramped by comparison.
If you still want to go in, stick to the Treasury and Armoury, or join a guided Wawel tour that adds the stories the rooms are missing.
Rynek Underground Museum
We had high hopes. A medieval market buried under the Main Market Square sounded right up our street, and it felt wonderfully atmospheric.
Then we tried to read the signs. The Polish ones were clear despite the dim light, but the English ones looked like fine print designed not to be read.
Much of what’s down there is just stones, and it’s hard to picture the old market. We usually spend ages reading museum signs, so leaving after 30-ish minutes says a lot.
With so much else to see in Krakow, we’d skip it unless archaeology REALLY is your thing. In that case, book a guided tour of the Rynek. The guides we passed told far better stories than the signs.
Town Hall Tower
If you’ve followed us for a while, you’ll know we can’t resist a good viewpoint. A tower in the middle of the Main Square? We were up those stairs without a second thought.
At the top, though, the view is through small windows you have to stoop to look through. It’s a bit like peering through a letterbox. You can’t go outside, which is a shame.
A railing in front of the windows also means you can’t get a decent photo of the square. We’ve climbed towers with small windows before, like Bruges’ Belfry. But Krakow’s Town Hall Tower was the worst view of the lot… totally one to skip!
For views over Krakow, we’d head to Kościuszko Mound instead.
Stary Kleparz Market
We kept seeing Stary Kleparz recommended, and food markets are our weakness (we’ve been known to plan whole days around them).
It’s a real local market selling fruit, veg and flowers, which has its own charm. Visually, though, there isn’t much to it, with simple stalls in a small, partly covered square.
Markets like La Boqueria in Barcelona or the Great Market Hall in Budapest are a feast for the eyes as much as the stomach. Stary Kleparz just isn’t in that league.
If you’re staying nearby and need groceries, it’s handy. On a short city break, we’d spend the time elsewhere.
The fire-breathing dragon
Krakow’s dragon legend is brilliant. A dragon once lived under Wawel Hill until a clever shoemaker fed it a sheep stuffed with sulphur. It drank from the river until it burst. The statue, sadly, doesn’t live up to it.
After a whole day at Wawel Castle, we still had to google where it was. (It’s down by the river, not up on the hill.)
Half the crowd was kids climbing on its tail, the other half was adults holding up phones. Everyone was waiting for a flame that lasts a few seconds and comes every few minutes. Photo taken, off we went.
We’re no art experts, but next to the elegant dragons on Ljubljana’s Dragon Bridge, this one left us cold. If time is tight, we’d spend it on other Krakow sights.
Krakow FAQs
Here are quick answers to the questions most first-timers ask us about Krakow, based on our two trips.
Is Krakow worth visiting?
Yes, absolutely. Krakow’s Old Town was one of the first places on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, and it’s remarkably well preserved. It’s also a city that makes you think, with its Jewish quarter and Auschwitz nearby. And with pierogi everywhere and prices well below Paris or London, it’s an easy pick for a first trip to Poland.
How many days do you need in Krakow?
3-4 days is ideal for a first visit to Krakow. 2 days cover the Old Town, Kazimierz and the main museums, and the extra days leave time for Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mine. With only 1 or 2 days, a combo tour fits both day trips into one.
On our last trip, we had a week and did the day trips separately. With only a long weekend, we’d book the combo and build the rest of the itinerary around it.
What should you book in advance in Krakow?
Book the Wieliczka Salt Mine, Schindler’s Factory and Auschwitz-Birkenau as early as you can. All three use timed entry and sell out, especially in summer. Since March 2026, Auschwitz tickets are no longer sold at the gate, so you need to buy them online or book a tour.
Can you do Auschwitz and Wieliczka in one day?
Yes. Organised combo tours from Krakow visit Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mine in a single day, with transport and entry included. It’s a long and emotionally heavy day, because Auschwitz alone takes several hours. But it’s the best option if you only have 1-2 days in Krakow.
We did them separately because we had a week. That said, we’ve done similar combo days in other cities and never regretted one, and this Auschwitz and salt mine combo tour is the one we’d pick.
How does Krakow compare to Warsaw?
Krakow is smaller and more polished, with a medieval Old Town that survived World War II. Warsaw’s Old Town was rebuilt after the war, and the capital feels grittier and more modern, with stronger museums. Krakow’s big advantage is location, with Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mine both easy day trips away.
Honestly, we prefer Warsaw. Its museums kept us busy for days, and its Royal Castle impressed us far more than Wawel. Krakow is beautifully kept and well worth seeing. Nothing there wowed us in quite the same way, though. If you’re adding the capital, here are the best things to do in Warsaw.
What is Krakow famous for?
Krakow is famous for its Old Town, its Main Square (one of Europe’s largest medieval squares) and Wawel Castle. Most visitors also use it as a base for Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Food-wise, it’s known for pierogi and the obwarzanek (a bagel-like bread ring). Its fire-breathing dragon legend shows up on souvenirs all over town.
Is Krakow cheap?
Krakow is affordable by Western European standards, though prices have risen in recent years. Eating out is still good value, especially at milk bars (no-frills canteens serving Polish home cooking), while big attractions and tours like the Wieliczka Salt Mine cost closer to Western prices.
Ready to plan your Krakow trip?
On a first visit, it’s tempting to stay inside the Old Town. We’d push you further. Some of our best hours in Krakow were spent in Nowa Huta, deep in the salt mine and out on the river after dark.
Once your Krakow plans are taking shape:
Book the big sights early, and save room for one more plate of pierogi.
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