Things to do in Poland

Warsaw and Kraków take most of the attention. The rest is a country of river cities, each on its own trade. Amber and shipping built the coast; textiles and cathedrals built inland.

The coast, the west, and the middle

Gdańsk anchors the Tricity with Sopot and Gdynia, some three hundred kilometres north of Warsaw. A fast train takes two and a half hours.

Wrocław sits west, on the Odra, its cathedral island older than the city's German centuries. Its islands multiply from there. Poznań, between the two capitals, holds Poland's oldest cathedral, founded under Mieszko I around 968 and still his burial place.

• Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia — the Tricity on the Baltic, amber shops and a beach resort back to back with a working port.
• Wrocław — bronze dwarves scattered through the streets since 2001, marking an eighties protest movement.
• Poznań — Cathedral Island, and a Renaissance town hall where two mechanical goats butt heads at noon.
• Toruń — Copernicus was born here in 1473, and the gingerbread trade is older still.

Brick, not stone

Poland's Gothic runs in brick rather than cut stone, and Malbork shows why. The Teutonic Knights began building it in 1274. By 1406 it was the largest brick castle anywhere, a title it still holds.

It sits between Warsaw and Gdańsk. Most trains between them pause there anyway. Elsewhere the pattern repeats on a smaller scale: brick town halls, brick churches, red walls under steep roofs across the north.

Practical

• Weather. Summers reach around 23C inland and a touch cooler on the Baltic coast; winters sit near or just below 0C everywhere, darkest and greyest by December.
• Currency. The złoty, not the euro; cards are accepted almost everywhere in the cities.
• Getting around. Fast trains link Warsaw to Gdańsk and to Wrocław in under three hours each; Kraków to Zakopane, in the mountains to the south, is under two hours by car.
• Tipping. Around ten per cent in restaurants, rounding up elsewhere.
• Booking ahead. Malbork and the Tricity beaches fill up fast in July and August.