Nine days from Berlin to Warsaw: the East Berlin nobody photographs, and a capital rebuilt from paintings

Three nights in Berlin, two in Poznan and three in Warsaw, on the direct express east, with about eight hours of train in total.

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Length
9 days, 8 nights
Where you stay
Berlin, Poznań, Warsaw
Places
25 across 9 days
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One train does most of this. The Berlin to Warsaw express runs several times a day, takes about five and a half hours end to end, and stops at Poznan roughly halfway. Split the journey there and you get three cities for the price of one long afternoon in a seat.

The route is worth doing in this order because it goes from the well-lit version of the twentieth century to the difficult one. Berlin has turned its own division into an industry, tidily signposted and mostly free. Poznan is where the Polish state began in the tenth century and where, in June 1956, workers walked out of a locomotive factory and were shot at in the street, thirteen years before anybody thought that could happen. Warsaw was destroyed on purpose, block by block, after the rising of 1944, and then rebuilt from photographs and from a set of eighteenth-century townscape paintings that had survived the war in a crate.

Three nights in Berlin, spent east of the old line rather than around the Brandenburg Gate. Two in Poznan, which is not on many itineraries and should be. Three in Warsaw, which is not a beautiful city and is one of the most interesting in Europe.

Highlights

  • Two kilometres of Stalinist boulevard in east Berlin, wider than the Champs-Elysees and built for tank parades
  • The longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, painted end to end in 1990 by a hundred and eighteen artists
  • An airfield inside Berlin, closed in 2008, now three hundred hectares of public grass with the runways left in
  • Two mechanical goats butting heads over the Poznan town hall at noon, as they have since 1551
  • The crypt in Poznan where the first ruler of Poland was buried in the tenth century
  • The Warsaw room hung with the paintings the city was rebuilt from

Where to stay

Berlin, three nights

Almost every first visit to Berlin happens in a square kilometre around the Brandenburg Gate. That is the tidy version. This route spends its three nights east of where the Wall ran: the Stalinist boulevard built for parades, the longest painted stretch of the Wall still standing, the Soviet memorial in the woods at Treptow, and the airfield in the middle of the city that people now fly kites on.

Stay in Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg or Kreuzberg. All three are cheaper than Mitte, all three have the food, and all three put you within a few U-Bahn stops of everything below.

Poznan, two nights

By train from Berlin, Berlin Central Station to Poznań Główny, about 241 km.

Poznan is where the country starts. The first ruler of the Poles accepted baptism in 966, the first Polish cathedral went up here two years after that, and he and his son are in the crypt under it. Then the city spent a century and a half inside Prussia and then Germany, which is why there is a colossal imperial castle four hundred metres from the station, built for Wilhelm II and later remodelled for Hitler.

It is also where the first mass revolt against Communist rule in the eastern bloc happened, in June 1956, and was put down with tanks. Two nights covers all of that comfortably plus a market square that competes with anywhere in Poland, and the city charges about half what Krakow does.

Warsaw, three nights

By train from Poznań, Poznań Główny to Warsaw Central railway station, about 278 km.

After the rising of 1944 was crushed, the surviving population was expelled and German demolition squads spent three months methodically destroying what was left. Roughly eighty-five per cent of the left bank was gone by January 1945. The old town you walk through today was rebuilt between 1949 and 1963, largely from photographs, plans and a set of townscape paintings from the 1770s, and UNESCO listed it in 1980 for exactly that reason.

So Warsaw is not old, and it is not pretty in the way Krakow is, and neither of those is the point. Three nights gets you the reconstruction, the rising, the Jewish history that had nine hundred years here, and one afternoon in a royal park. Stay in the centre or in Powisle by the river; Praga on the east bank is the interesting district and a longer walk home.

Day by day

Day 1 in Berlin

The parade boulevard, a museum of everyday socialism, and the tower at dusk

Start where East Berlin wanted to be photographed. The boulevard running east from Alexanderplatz was rebuilt from rubble in the 1950s as Stalinallee, and it is two kilometres of tiled apartment blocks with columns and pediments, ninety metres wide, laid out for parades. Walk it from the twin towers at the eastern end back towards the centre. The 1953 uprising started here, with the men building it.

Then a museum you handle rather than read. Sit in a Trabant, open the kitchen cupboards of a reconstructed flat, listen to the state radio, look at a Stasi file. It is small, cheerfully crowded, and gets across daily life better than a wall of text would.

Finish on the television tower at dusk. It is 368 metres, went up in 1969 to be visible from the western half of the city, and the observation deck is at just over 200 metres with a bar and a slowly revolving floor. The sun on the steel sphere throws a cross-shaped reflection that West Berliners called the Pope's revenge, which the government could do nothing about.

  1. 14:30

    Karl-Marx-Allee

    Landmark

    Two kilometres of monumental socialist boulevard, built from 1952 as Stalinallee, ninety metres wide, faced in ceramic tiles, with towers at Frankfurter Tor. Free, always open, and best walked east to west in the late afternoon.

  2. 16:00

    DDR Museum

    Culture

    A hands-on museum of ordinary life in East Germany, opposite the cathedral on the Spree: a Trabant to sit in, a furnished flat to poke around, a school desk and a Stasi listening room. About ninety minutes and always busy.

  3. 18:00

    Fernsehturm

    Historic

    Germany's tallest structure at 368 metres, opened in 1969, with the observation deck and bar at just over 200 metres and a restaurant that turns. Book a time slot online to skip a long queue; sunset slots go first.

  4. 20:00

    Dinner in Friedrichshain

    Eat

    Two stops east on the U5. Simon-Dach-Strasse and the lanes around it are cheap, loud and open late, and the Vietnamese places nearby are as good as anything in Berlin.

With more time: Landing in the morning instead, the cathedral and the museum island are five minutes west of the DDR museum, and walking round the outside of them costs nothing and orients you for the rest of the week.

Day 2 in Berlin

The Wall as it survives, and seven thousand Soviet soldiers in a wood

One day in the southeast, all of it walkable or two stops apart, and none of it in the guidebook photographs of the Brandenburg Gate.

Start on the bridge. It was built in 1896 in red brick with mock-medieval turrets, purely for show, and from 1961 it was a border crossing where West Berliners on foot were let through and nobody came the other way. Now the U1 runs over the top of it and the two halves of the city cross without noticing.

The stretch of Wall below it is the longest still standing: 1.3 kilometres of the inner wall along the river, painted in the spring of 1990 by 118 artists from 21 countries in the few months when it was still possible to get at it. Some of it is very good, some is not, and it has been restored twice because the sun and the tagging destroy it.

In the afternoon walk south into Treptower Park, where the Soviet Union built its principal war memorial in the city in 1949. About seven thousand Red Army soldiers are buried under the lawns. At the end of a long avenue of stone banners stands a twelve-metre bronze soldier with a rescued German child in one arm and a lowered sword in the other, and under his boot a broken swastika. It is enormous, and unsettling, and almost nobody goes.

  1. 10:00

    Oberbaum Bridge

    Architecture

    A red brick bridge of 1896 with fake medieval towers, carrying the U1 over the Spree between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. It was a foot crossing point between the two Berlins from 1961 to 1989. Free, and the walk across takes five minutes.

  2. 10:45

    East Side Gallery

    Culture

    The longest surviving section of the Wall, 1.3 km along the Spree, painted in the spring of 1990 by artists from twenty-one countries and restored twice since. Free, open, and busiest in the middle of the day. Walk it from the bridge end.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch in Friedrichshain or on the water

    Eat

    The riverside bars between the gallery and the park do decent cheap food, and there are beach bars on the sand in summer.

  4. 14:30

    Treptower Park

    Leisure

    The main Soviet war memorial in Berlin, finished in 1949, with about 7,000 Red Army dead buried under the lawns and a twelve-metre bronze soldier at the end of the avenue holding a child and a lowered sword. Free, open at all hours, and usually empty.

With more time: The park runs a long way along the Spree from the memorial, with rowing boats for hire and an observatory with a very large refracting telescope at the far end, and it swallows an afternoon happily.

Day 3 in Berlin

A building that argues before you read it, and an airport turned into a park

Daniel Libeskind's museum in Kreuzberg is a zinc-clad zigzag with slashes for windows, and the point of it is that the architecture does the work first. Before you reach a single exhibit you walk three intersecting corridors, one ending at a stair, one at a garden of tilted concrete columns, one at a bare concrete shaft with a slot of daylight at the top and a door that shuts behind you. The permanent exhibition upstairs covers nine hundred years of Jewish life in Germany rather than only its end, which is the reason to go.

Come out and walk south through Kreuzberg for lunch. Bergmannstrasse and the streets around it are nineteenth-century tenements that missed the bombs, with cafes, a covered market and a set of hillside cemeteries that people picnic in.

Then Tempelhof. The airport closed in 2008, the city voted against building on the field, and three hundred hectares of runway, taxiway and grass in the middle of Berlin became a park with nothing in it. People cycle down the runways, kite-buggy along them, barbecue on the aprons and grow vegetables at the edges. The terminal behind, one of the largest buildings on earth when it was built in the 1930s, is where the Berlin airlift landed a plane every ninety seconds through the winter of 1948.

  1. 09:30

    Jewish Museum Berlin

    Culture

    Nine hundred years of German Jewish history in a Libeskind building of 1999 whose voids, slanting floors and concrete shaft are part of the exhibition. Three hours if you do it properly, and the basement axes take the first thirty minutes on their own.

  2. 12:30

    Bergmannstraße

    Landmark

    A long nineteenth-century street in Kreuzberg that missed the bombing, with a covered market hall, second-hand shops and pavement tables all the way down. The best cheap lunch in this part of the city.

  3. 15:00

    Tempelhof Airport

    Other

    Three hundred hectares of decommissioned airfield, closed to aircraft in 2008 and kept clear of building after a public vote. Cycle or walk the runways; the vast 1930s terminal behind was the destination of the 1948 airlift. Free, and the gates shut at dusk.

With more time: Tours of the terminal building and the bunkers underneath run most days in English and need booking; the hangars held airlift aircraft in 1948 and, more recently, several thousand refugees.

Day 4 in Poznań

East to Poznan, an imperial castle and the June that started it

Three hours east on the Warsaw express, across the sandy plain of Brandenburg and over the Oder into Poland with no ceremony at all. Poznan Glowny is a fifteen minute walk from the old town, and the first thing on the way is not Polish at all.

The castle beside the station was built between 1905 and 1910 for Wilhelm II, who wanted a residence in what was then the German east, complete with a throne room and a copy of the Alhambra's fountain. Thirty years later Albert Speer's office remodelled it for Hitler, adding an office and a study that were never used. It is now a cultural centre with cinemas and a cafe in it, which is a sensible way to deal with a building like that.

Inside it is a museum to what happened on 28 June 1956. Workers from the locomotive plant marched into the middle of the city over pay and food prices; the crowd reached a hundred thousand; the army sent in tanks and at least fifty-seven people were killed, one of them a thirteen-year-old boy carrying a flag stained with blood. It was the first mass revolt in the eastern bloc, twelve years before Prague and twenty-four before the shipyards in Gdansk.

Then walk into the square, which is a complete surprise: painted merchant houses on all four sides, arcaded stalls down the middle, and enough bars to keep a university city going.

  1. 09:00

    Train to Poznan

    Travel

    Berlin Hauptbahnhof to Poznan Glowny, under three hours on the Warsaw express, four or five times a day. Advance fares are a fraction of the walk-up price.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch near the station

    Eat

    The old brewery complex between the station and the old town has a food hall in it. Or find a milk bar and eat three courses for the price of a beer.

  3. 14:15

    Imperial Castle

    Historic

    Put up for Wilhelm II in the years before 1910 as a residence in the German east, then remodelled for Hitler in the 1940s with an office that was never used. Now a centre for cinema, theatre and exhibitions, with a courtyard anyone can walk into.

  4. 15:45

    The Museum of Poznań Uprising 1956

    Culture

    A museum inside the castle to the workers' revolt of 28 June 1956, when the locomotive works walked out, the crowd reached six figures and the army opened fire. At least 57 died. The first mass rising against Communist rule anywhere in the bloc.

  5. 17:30

    Stary Rynek

    Historic

    One of the largest market squares in Poland, laid out in 1253, ringed by painted merchant fronts, with an island of arcaded buildings down the middle. Rebuilt after 1945; the eastern side was left in a deliberately modern style.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner on the square

    Eat

    Poznan's own dish is a croissant filled with white poppy seed, sold with a certificate and eaten on St Martin's day. For dinner, order duck with apples or pyry z gzikiem, potatoes with curd cheese.

Day 5 in Poznań

Goats at noon, and the crypt where Poland begins

Be on the square at twenty to twelve. Above the clock on the Renaissance town hall, two doors open on the hour of noon and two metal goats come out and butt their heads together twelve times. They have done it since 1551, the story attached involves a cook, a fire and two animals bought for a banquet, and the whole city turns up to watch a mechanical joke that is nearly five hundred years old.

The town hall under them was rebuilt in the 1550s by an Italian architect and is the best Renaissance building in this part of Poland, with a loggia on three levels facing the square and a painted ceiling in the great hall inside.

In the afternoon cross to the island in the Warta. This is where the country began: Mieszko, the first ruler of the Poles, was baptised in 966, the cathedral went up two years later, and he and his son Boleslaw are in the crypt beneath the golden chapel. The building has burned and been rebuilt repeatedly, most recently after 1945, and what you see is a Gothic restoration over Romanesque foundations you can walk down into.

Next door, the heritage centre on the far bank is a concrete box facing the cathedral across the water, and it does one thing very well: it explains, in ninety minutes and in English, how a pagan duchy on a river island turned into a European kingdom.

  1. 11:40

    Town Hall

    Architecture

    Rebuilt in Renaissance style in the 1550s by Giovanni Battista di Quadro, with a three-tier loggia facing the square. Two mechanical goats butt heads above the clock at noon, a tradition running since 1551. The city museum inside is worth the small ticket.

  2. 13:15

    Lunch off the square

    Eat

    The streets running south do lunch menus for a few zloty. Order zurek, the sour rye soup, or bigos, hunter's stew, and expect it to arrive fast.

  3. 14:15

    St. Peter's and Paul's Cathedral

    Religious

    The first cathedral in Poland, founded in 968 on an island in the Warta, burned and rebuilt many times and restored to Gothic form after 1945. Mieszko I and Boleslaw the Brave lie in the golden chapel, and the Romanesque foundations are open below the floor.

  4. 15:45

    Brama Poznania ICHOT

    Historic

    A concrete interpretation centre of 2014 on the far bank facing the cathedral, connected by a footbridge, explaining how a river island became a kingdom. Audio guides in English, about ninety minutes, and better than that description sounds.

With more time: The baroque parish church two streets south of the square is one of the finest in Poland, with red marble columns and an organ recital most days at noon in summer, and it takes twenty minutes.

Day 6 in Warsaw

On to Warsaw, Stalin's tower and a rebuilt old town

Two and a half hours across flat country and you are in the middle of Warsaw. Leave the bag and go straight up the tower opposite the station, because understanding this city means seeing how much of it is new.

The Palace of Culture and Science was a gift from Stalin in 1955, which is one way of describing something nobody asked for. It is 237 metres to the tip, has more than three thousand rooms, and for sixty years was the tallest building in the country. Warsaw has never decided what to think about it: there have been serious proposals to demolish it, and it is also on the heritage register. The viewing terrace is on the thirtieth floor and the view from it is the point, because from up there the old town is a small brown patch in the middle of a great deal of concrete and glass.

Then walk or take a bus north to that brown patch. The market square, the tenements and the town walls were rebuilt from 1949 onwards on the footprint of what German demolition squads destroyed in the winter of 1944. The barbican at the north end is a round brick gun tower of 1548, rebuilt in the 1950s from surviving fragments and old engravings.

Eat in the New Town, which is only new in the sense of having been founded in the fifteenth century rather than the thirteenth.

  1. 09:30

    Train to Warsaw

    Travel

    Poznan Glowny to Warszawa Centralna, about two and a half hours, several times a day. The station is a 1975 concrete slab with the platforms underground; follow signs for the Palace of Culture to get out on the right side.

  2. 13:30

    Palace of Culture and Science

    Historic

    Stalin's gift to Warsaw, finished in 1955, 237 metres to the tip and over 3,000 rooms, containing theatres, cinemas, a swimming pool and a museum. The terrace on the thirtieth floor is the best orientation in the city. Buy the ticket online at busy times.

  3. 15:15

    Late lunch in Srodmiescie

    Eat

    The streets north of the palace towards Swietokrzyska have milk bars and canteens where the lunch of the day costs a few zloty and is genuinely good.

  4. 17:00

    Old Town Market Square

    Architecture

    The heart of the reconstructed old town, rebuilt between 1949 and 1953 from photographs, plans and eighteenth-century paintings. The whole quarter was listed by UNESCO in 1980 precisely because it is a reconstruction. Painted fronts, a mermaid in the middle, and cafes on all four sides.

  5. 18:30

    The Barbican

    Historic

    A round brick gun tower of 1548 at the northern gate of the old town, rebuilt in the 1950s from fragments and old engravings. Free, and the wall walk beside it links the old town to the new one.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner in the New Town

    Eat

    Five minutes north of the barbican and noticeably cheaper than the market square. Pierogi, duck, and a shot of chilled bison grass vodka if somebody offers.

Day 7 in Warsaw

The paintings the city was rebuilt from, and sixty-three days in 1944

The royal castle was blown up by German engineers in 1944 and stood as an empty plot until 1971, when reconstruction began, paid for largely by public donations from Poles at home and abroad. It was finished in 1984. What is inside is partly original, because the fittings, doors, floors and paintings were hidden by museum staff during the occupation and brought back.

The room to see is the one hung with views of eighteenth-century Warsaw by Bernardo Bellotto, who signed himself Canaletto after his more famous uncle and painted this city street by street in the 1770s. Those canvases went into the reconstruction as working drawings: architects used them to get the doorways, the cornices and the shop signs right. There is nowhere else in Europe where a set of paintings did that job.

The cathedral a hundred metres away was reduced to one wall in 1944 and rebuilt in a Gothic style it may never quite have had. Set into the outside wall on Dziekania is a length of steel track from a Goliath, the small remote-controlled demolition tank the Germans drove into the building during the rising.

The afternoon belongs to the museum of that rising, out in Wola in an old tram power station. It opened in 2004, sixty years on, and it is loud, dense, and does not simplify: the rising began on 1 August 1944, lasted sixty-three days, and cost about 16,000 fighters and 150,000 to 200,000 civilians their lives while the Red Army sat on the other side of the river.

  1. 09:30

    The Royal Castle

    Historic

    Blown up in 1944, rebuilt between 1971 and 1984 from public donations, and refitted with the original doors, floors and paintings that museum staff hid through the war. The Canaletto room holds Bellotto's 1770s views of the city, which the architects worked from.

  2. 12:15

    St. John's Cathedral

    Religious

    The Gothic cathedral of Warsaw, destroyed to a single wall in 1944 and rebuilt by 1956. Set into the outer wall on the north side is a track from a Goliath demolition tank used against it during the rising. Free, with a small charge for the crypt.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch on the way to Wola

    Eat

    Eat before the museum rather than after it. There are good bistros around Plac Grzybowski, halfway between the old town and the museum.

  4. 15:15

    The Warsaw Rising Museum

    Culture

    In a former tram power station, opened on the sixtieth anniversary in 2004: a dense, loud, three-floor account of the sixty-three days from 1 August 1944, with a replica sewer to crawl through and a wall of survivors' voices. Timed tickets, and book ahead at weekends.

With more time: If the museum leaves you needing air, the Vistula boulevards ten minutes east are the best thing Warsaw has built this century: several kilometres of riverside decking, bars and beaches, with wild woodland on the far bank.

Day 8 in Warsaw

Nine hundred years in one museum, and a royal park in the afternoon

Before the war, one Warsaw resident in three was Jewish, about three hundred and fifty thousand people, the largest Jewish community in Europe. The museum that tells that story stands in Muranow, on ground that was the ghetto and is now a district of 1950s blocks built on its rubble, facing the ghetto heroes monument where the German chancellor knelt in 1970.

It is not a Holocaust museum, and it is important that it is not. Eight galleries take you from the first Jewish merchants arriving in the tenth century through a reconstructed painted synagogue roof, a Renaissance street, the Jewish enlightenment, and only then to the war and after it. Give it three hours.

Then get on the metro and go south to the park the last king of Poland built for himself. Lazienki is eighty hectares of lakes, oaks and peacocks with a neoclassical palace standing in the water on an island, an outdoor theatre with the stage on a second island, and a great many red squirrels that will climb your leg.

On summer Sundays a grand piano is rolled out under the trees twice in the day and somebody plays Chopin for an hour, free, while a few hundred people sit on the grass with rugs.

  1. 09:30

    POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

    Culture

    Eight galleries on a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland, opened in 2013 on the site of the ghetto, with a reconstructed seventeenth-century synagogue ceiling at the centre. Three hours minimum, timed tickets, and the temporary shows are usually strong.

  2. 12:45

    Lunch in Muranow or the centre

    Eat

    There is a decent cafe in the museum, and the streets to the south have Jewish and Israeli restaurants that are among the best eating in the city.

  3. 14:30

    Łazienki Park

    Historic

    Eighty hectares of royal park laid out for Stanislaw August in the 1760s, with lakes, an amphitheatre on an island and free Chopin recitals under the monument at noon and four on summer Sundays. Free, open dawn to dusk.

  4. 16:15

    Palace on the Isle

    Historic

    The king's neoclassical villa built out over the lake on the site of a bath house, hence the park's name. Original interiors and a picture collection, and the terrace at the back looks straight down the water. Small ticket, closed on Mondays.

With more time: Wilanow, the baroque palace nine kilometres south, is the other royal residence and survived the war intact, which after three days of reconstructions is a strange and welcome thing to walk into. Bus 116 or 180 from the park gates.

Day 9 in Warsaw

The half of Warsaw that was never knocked down

Cross the river for the last morning. The Red Army reached the east bank in September 1944 and stopped there, which is the reason the rising failed and also the reason Praga still stands. Its streets were not levelled and not rebuilt, so the tenements are the real thing: brick courtyards, chipped stucco, shrines to the Virgin built in the yards during the occupation and still tended.

Zabkowska Street is the spine of it, cobbled, with a former vodka distillery at the end that has been turned into a square of bars, a museum and a market. The district has been discovered in the last decade and is going the way these districts go, but for now it is still lived in rather than curated.

Then the airport, which is fifteen minutes from the centre by train, or the station, which has fast trains south to Krakow in two and a half hours.

  1. 09:30

    Ząbkowska Street

    Landmark

    The cobbled main street of Praga on the east bank, lined with pre-war tenements that were never destroyed, with courtyard shrines put up during the occupation. The old vodka works at the end is now a square of bars, a museum and a covered market.

  2. 11:30

    Breakfast in Praga

    Eat

    The cafes around the distillery courtyard do proper coffee and good bread, and prices here are still a notch below the west bank.

  3. 13:00

    To the airport or onward

    Travel

    Trains to Chopin airport run from the central station every half hour and take under twenty minutes. For onward travel, Krakow is two and a half hours south and Gdansk under three north.

Before you go

The trains

It runs four or five times a day, direct, with a Polish crew and a restaurant car. Berlin to Poznan is about two hours and forty-five minutes; Poznan to Warsaw is another two and a half.

Buy from the Polish railway, which is usually a good deal cheaper than the German site for the same seat, and book a few weeks out for the low fare. Seats are numbered and the trains are busy on Friday and Sunday afternoons.

All three stations sit in the middle of their cities. Warszawa Centralna is a concrete slab from 1975 that is easy to get lost in and five minutes on foot from the Palace of Culture.

Money and prices

Euros in Germany, zloty in Poland, and cards work for everything in both, including trams, museums and market stalls. Take a little cash in Poland for church donations and small-town buses.

The price drop at the border is real. A restaurant dinner in Poznan or Warsaw costs about half what the same meal costs in Berlin, and Berlin is already the cheapest big city in western Europe. Poland's milk bars, the subsidised canteens left over from the Communist period and still trading, will feed you properly for the price of a coffee.

What to book

The Warsaw Rising Museum and the Polin museum both sell timed entry and both fill up at weekends, so book two or three days ahead. Everything else on this route takes walk-ins.

If you want the top of the Palace of Culture at sunset, buy that online too. The lift takes thirty seconds and the queue can take forty minutes.

When to come

May to September. This is a flat, continental part of Europe: winters are grey and can sit well below freezing for weeks, and the summer evenings are long and warm enough to eat outside until ten.

Late May and June are the pick. Warsaw's free Chopin concerts in the Lazienki park run on Sunday afternoons from the middle of May to the end of September, which is one of the better free things any capital offers.

Six hundred kilometres, one express line and three cities that spent the last century being fought over. Berlin has made its division legible and free to visit. Poznan, which most itineraries skip, holds both the beginning of Poland and the first revolt against the system that ran it. Warsaw was deliberately erased and put back from paintings, and the paintings are still hanging in the castle.

Go between May and September, book the two Warsaw museums before you leave, and split the journey rather than sitting on it.

Go deeper on one city

Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Why stop in Poznan rather than going straight through?
Because five and a half hours in a seat is a wasted day, and because Poznan is where the Polish state began and where the first mass revolt against Communist rule was put down with tanks. It also has one of the finest market squares in Poland, mechanical goats that have been butting heads since 1551, and prices well below Krakow's. Two nights is the right length; one would work at a push.
Is three nights enough for Berlin if I have never been?
It is enough for one coherent version of Berlin, which is what this route uses them for: the eastern half, the Wall as it survives, and the airfield. It leaves out the Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island and Potsdam. If those are the reason you are going, add two nights at the start rather than borrowing them from Warsaw.
How do the tickets work?
Buy the whole Berlin to Warsaw journey, or each leg separately, from the Polish operator's site or app. Advance fares are cheap and tied to a specific train and seat; walk-up fares are perhaps double and still not expensive. There is no ticket barrier at any of these stations, but conductors check everything.
Is Warsaw worth three nights when Krakow exists?
They are not the same kind of trip. Krakow is intact and beautiful and you look at it. Warsaw was destroyed and rebuilt and you read it, and it holds the two museums on this route that people talk about afterwards, on the rising and on a thousand years of Polish Jewish life. Three nights is the minimum for both plus the old town.
Can I copy this and change it?
Yes. The two obvious edits are extending north from Warsaw to Gdansk, which is under three hours and adds the Baltic and the shipyard where Solidarity started, or continuing south to Krakow, also under three hours, for a very different Poland.