Things to do in Wroclaw

Landmark · Stare Miasto

One of Europe's largest medieval market squares, rebuilt after 1945 around a Gothic town hall that survived.

Local tip: The Piwnica Świdnicka beneath the town hall is one of the oldest restaurants in Europe, operating since the thirteenth century. Look for the dwarfs — there are several hundred bronze ones across the city and the hunt is a genuine local pastime rather than a tourist gimmick.

Culture · Cathedral Island

The oldest part of Wrocław, a cluster of Gothic churches on what was once a river island, still gas-lit.

Local tip: Come at dusk. A lamplighter in period dress lights the gas lamps by hand every evening, all year, and it is one of the last places in Europe where that is a job rather than a re-enactment.

Landmark · Szczytnicki Park, east

Max Berg's 1913 Centennial Hall, a reinforced concrete dome that was the largest in the world when built and is now a UNESCO site.

Local tip: The Japanese Garden and the enormous Szczytnicki Park sit immediately behind it, and the multimedia fountain out front runs free shows on summer evenings. Almost every visitor sees the hall and almost none walks the park.

Neighborhood · North of the river

A dense grid of nineteenth-century tenements that escaped both the 1945 siege and the postwar demolitions, now the city's craft and gallery district.

Local tip: Walk the courtyards off Łokietka and Roosevelta. The district was derelict twenty years ago and is now where the studios, workshops and better small bars are — the version of Wrocław that has not been renovated into blandness.

Culture · East of the old town

A 114-metre painted cyclorama of the 1794 battle, brought from Lwów in 1946 and kept rolled up in storage for forty years because the subject embarrassed the authorities.

Local tip: It is displayed in a purpose-built rotunda and takes about half an hour. The story of how it got here — and why it could not be shown until 1985 — is the actual reason to go and tells you more about this city than the painting does.

Nature · South-east, on the river

A wooded island in the Odra reachable by footbridge, part of a chain of twelve river islands that give Wrocław more bridges than any Polish city.

Local tip: Rent a bike and follow the river east from the centre — the path runs through Opatowicka and out past the weirs of the flood-control system, which is worth seeing precisely because it is what kept the city dry in 2024. Almost no visitors get past Hala Stulecia.