The Kraków region attracts more visitors - Polish and foreign - than any other in the country. The Tatras , which form the border with Slovakia, are Poland's grandest and most beautiful, snowcapped for much of the year and markedly alpine in feel. Along with their foothills, the Podhale , and the neighbouring, more modest peaks of the Pieniny , they have been an established centre for hikers for the best part of a century. And with much justice, for there are few ranges in Europe where you can get so authentic a mountain experience without having to be a committed climber. The region as a whole is perfect for low-key rambling, mixing with holidaying Poles, and getting an insight into the culture of the indigenous górale , as the highlanders are known. Other outdoor activities are well catered for, too, with raft rides down the Dunajec Gorge in summer and some fine winter skiing on the higher Tatra slopes.

 

With a population of just under one million, Kraków itself is equally impressive: a city that ranks with Prague and Vienna as one of the architectural gems of central Europe, with a Stare Miasto which retains an atmosphere of fin-de-siècle stateliness. A longtime university centre, its streets are a cavalcade of churches and aristocratic palaces, while at its heart is one of the grandest of European squares, the Rynek Glówny. The city's significance for Poles goes well beyond the aesthetic though, for this was the country's ancient royal capital, and has been home to many of the nation's greatest writers, artists and thinkers, a tradition retained in the thriving cultural life. The Catholic Church in Poland has often looked to Kraków for guidance, and its influence in this sphere has never been greater - Pope John Paul II was archbishop of Kraków until his election in 1978. Equally important are the city's Jewish roots . Until the last war, this was one of the great Jewish centres in Europe, a past whose fabric remains clear in the old ghetto area of Kazimierz, and whose culmination is starkly enshrined at the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau , west of Kraków.

This section also takes in an area which loosely corresponds to Malopolska - a region with no precise boundaries, but which by any definition includes some of the historic heartlands of the Polish state. Highlights here, in countryside characterized by rolling, open landscape, market towns and farming villages, include Kielce , springboard for hikes into the Swietokrzyskie Mountains , the magnificent ruins of Krzyztopór Castle and the pilgrim centre of Czestochowa , home of the Black Madonna, the country's principal religious symbol.

 

Warsaw has two enduring points of definition: the Wisla River, running south to north across the Mazovian plains, and the Moscow-Berlin road, stretching across this terrain - and through the city - east to west. Such a location, and four hundred years of capital status, have ensured a history writ large with occupations and uprisings, intrigues and heroism. Warsaw's sufferings, its near-total obliteration in World War II and subsequent resurrection from the ashes, has lodged the city in the national consciousness. In the latest era of political struggle - the emergence of Solidarity, fall of communism and the re-establishment of electoral democracy - Warsaw has at times seemed overshadowed by events in Gdansk and the industrial centres of the south, but its role has been a key one nonetheless, as a focus of popular and intellectual opposition to communism, the site of past and future power and, increasingly, as the centre of the country's rapid economic transformation.

 

Likely to be most visitors' first experience of Poland, Warsaw makes an initial impression that is all too often negative. The years of communist rule have left no great aesthetic glories, and there's sometimes a hollowness to the faithful reconstructions of earlier eras. However, as throughout Poland, the pace of social change is tangible and fascinating, as the openings provided by the post-communist order turn the streets into a continuous marketplace. Many of the once grey and tawdry state shopfronts of the city centre have given way to a host of colourful new private initiatives, while the postwar dearth of nightlife and entertainments has become a complaint of the past now that a mass of new bars, restaurants and clubs have established themselves.

A knowledge of Warsaw's rich and often tragic history can transform the city, revealing voices from the past in even the ugliest quarters: a pockmarked wall becomes a precious prewar relic, a housing estate the one-time centre of Europe's largest ghetto, the whole city a living book of modern history. Among the concrete, there are reconstructed traces of Poland's imperial past, including a castle, a scattering of palaces and parks, and the restored streets of the historic Stare Miasto, while the headlong rush into the embrace of capitalist culture is already throwing up its own particular architectural legacy, some of it familiar - towering skyscrapers and plush Western shopfronts - some more original - Party headquarters turned stock exchanges, Stalin-era palaces transformed into business centres. Indeed, new construction is everywhere: many of the areas of waste ground left untouched since the destruction of World War II have disappeared under gleaming new office blocks, while many public squares (notably pl. Defilad and pl. Bankowy) are receiving extensive facelifts in order to make room for brand-new metro stations, department stores or corporate headquarters.

Wending its way north towards Gdansk and the Baltic Sea, the Wisla river divides Warsaw neatly in half: the main sights are located on the western bank, the eastern consists predominantly of residential and business districts. Marking the northern end of the city centre, the busy Stare Miasto (Old Town) provides the historic focal point. Rebuilt from scratch after World War II like most of Warsaw, the magnificent Zamek Królewski (Royal Castle), ancient Archikatedra sw. Jana (St John's Cathedral) and the Rynek Starego Miasta (Old Town Square) are the most striking examples of the capital's reconstruction. Baroque churches and the former palaces of the aristocracy line the streets west of the ring of defensive walls, and to the north, in the quietly atmospheric Nowe Miasto (New Town).

West of the Stare Miasto, in the Muranów and Mirów districts, is the former ghetto area, where the Nozyck Synagogue and the ul. Okopowa cemetery bear poignant testimony to the lost Jewish population. South from the Stare Miasto lies Sródmiescie , the city's commercial centre, its skyline dominated by the Palac Kultury i Nauk (Palace of Culture), Stalin's permanent legacy to the citizens of Warsaw. Linking the Stare Miasto and Sródmiescie, Krakowskie Przedmiescie is dotted with palaces and Baroque spires, and forms the first leg of the Trakt Królewski (Royal Way), a procession of open boulevards stretching all the way from plac Zamkowy to the stately king's residence at Wilanów on the southern outskirts of the city. Along the way is Park Lazienkowski , one of Warsaw's many delightful green spaces and the setting for the charming Palac Lazienkowski (Lazienki Palace), surrounded by waterways and lakes. Further out, the city becomes a welter of high-rise developments, but among them, historic suburbs like Zoliborz to the north and Praga to the east give a flavour of the authentic life of contemporary Warsaw.

Warsaw is a much livelier and more cosmopolitan place than it's given credit for in the West. It is a little-known fact, for instance, that there are up to thirty thousand Americans living in Warsaw - much the same number as in Prague - and since they're not all trying to write the Great American Novel, their contribution to the Polish capital has been more marked in terms of cuisine and practical facilities. It's an eye-opening experience for many people to walk the bustling, vibrant streets.

For those arriving without personal connections or contacts, Warsaw can seem forbidding, with much of the place still shutting down within a few hours of darkness, but Varsovians are generous and highly hospitable people: no social call, even to an office, is complete without a glass of herbata and plate of cakes. Postwar austerity has strengthened the tradition of home-based socializing, and if you strike up a friendship here (and friendships in Warsaw are quickly formed) you'll find much to enrich your experience of the city.