Nine days in Prague, Wroclaw and Krakow: one road east, and every city on it changed hands

Three nights in Prague, two in Wroclaw and three in Krakow, by train through Bohemia and Silesia, ending in the one Polish city the war left standing.

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Length
9 days, 8 nights
Where you stay
Prague, Wrocław, Kraków
Places
25 across 9 days
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Prague, Wroclaw and Krakow sit in a rough line east, and hardly anybody joins them up. Prague and Krakow both fill their squares with visitors all summer. Wroclaw, exactly between them, is the fourth largest city in Poland, has a market square as good as either and gets a fraction of the attention.

Put them together and the trip has a spine. Prague kept its buildings and its people. Wroclaw kept its buildings, mostly, and lost every one of its inhabitants: until 1945 it was Breslau, the largest German city east of Berlin, and by 1947 the Germans were gone and the streets had filled with Poles expelled from Lwow, six hundred kilometres to the east, who arrived carrying their own city with them. Krakow was the capital of Poland for five centuries, was spared the bombing that flattened Warsaw, and lost almost all of its Jewish population, from a quarter you can walk across in fifteen minutes.

The trains do the work. Prague to Wroclaw is a direct run of about four and a half hours through the Bohemian uplands and the Klodzko valley. Wroclaw to Krakow is three and a half. No car, no flights, and nothing on the route needs booking more than a week out.

Highlights

  • The Vysehrad rock at the other end of Prague, where the Czech composers are buried and nobody queues
  • A monastery library above Prague with two baroque halls and a stuffed crocodile in the corridor
  • A battle painting fifteen metres high and a hundred and fourteen round, hidden from the public for forty years because of where it was painted
  • Several hundred bronze dwarfs hiding on the pavements of Wroclaw, which started as a protest against the secret police
  • The trumpet call from the tower of St Mary's in Krakow, played every hour and cut off in the middle
  • The Remuh cemetery in Kazimierz, whose smashed headstones were rebuilt into a wall

Where to stay

Prague, three nights

The centre came through the war more or less untouched, so the Gothic, Renaissance and baroque layers are all still standing where they were put. That is the whole reason the city is beautiful and the whole reason it is crowded, and the two facts cannot be separated.

Three nights is enough if you use them properly, which means being at the castle when it opens and treating the middle of the day in the old town as a write-off. It also means going where the coaches do not: the second castle rock upriver, where the Czech national composers are buried, has as good a view and a hundredth of the crowd. Sleep on the Old Town side to walk everywhere or in Vinohrady to pay half.

Wroclaw, two nights

By train from Prague, Praha hlavní nádraží to Wrocław Main Railway Station, about 217 km.

Wroclaw has been Bohemian, Habsburg, Prussian, German and Polish, in that order, and the last change was the violent one. Breslau was besieged for eighty days in 1945, surrendered four days after Berlin did, and lost about seventy per cent of its buildings. Then its German population was expelled and the city was refilled with Poles who had themselves been expelled from Lwow, along with their university, their museum collections and, eventually, a vast painted panorama that the authorities did not dare put on display for four decades.

What all that produced is a Polish city in German bones, with a Gothic market square, a cathedral island reached over bridges, and several hundred small bronze dwarfs hidden around the pavements. Two nights covers it comfortably and it is the cheapest stop on the route.

Krakow, three nights

By train from Wrocław, Wrocław Main Railway Station to Kraków Główny railway station, about 236 km.

The royal capital until 1596 and the one big Polish city the war left standing, which is why Krakow looks old and Warsaw looks new. It has the largest medieval market square in Europe, a castle on a limestone rock above the river, and a university where Copernicus was a student.

It also has Kazimierz, which was a separate town, then the Jewish quarter, then empty. Three nights gives you the square, the castle hill, a day on Kazimierz and Podgorze across the river, and one morning left over. It does not give you the salt mines or Auschwitz; either of those is a full day and needs a fourth night.

Day by day

Day 1 in Prague

The Old Town Square, the clock nobody enjoys, and the bridge at dusk

Start where the city has always started. The Old Town Square has been the middle of Prague for a thousand years and holds the whole argument of the place in one space: Gothic spires on one side, baroque fronts on another, and a bronze reformer in the middle who was burned at the stake in 1415.

The clock on the town hall tower goes off on the hour, the apostles parade past two small windows, a skeleton pulls a rope, and it is over in forty-five seconds. Everybody knows it disappoints and the crowd assembles anyway. Go up the tower instead: there is a lift, the queue is short in the evening, and looking down on the square is the version of it worth having.

Then save the last hour of daylight for the bridge. At noon it is shoulder to shoulder with people photographing each other. At dusk the crowd thins, the statues go black against the sky, and the castle comes up floodlit on the ridge in front of you. Cross it slowly and eat on the far side.

  1. 15:00

    Old Town Square

    Architecture

    Gothic, Renaissance and baroque fronts around one open square, listed by UNESCO in 1992, with the Jan Hus monument of 1915 in the middle. Free and always open. Come back after ten at night when it empties.

  2. 16:15

    Astronomical Clock

    Architecture

    Running on the side of the old town hall since 1410 and still keeping medieval time, with a dial that also tracks the sun, the moon and the zodiac. The hourly show lasts under a minute. Pay for the tower and the lift instead.

  3. 19:00

    Charles Bridge

    Architecture

    Begun in 1357, sixteen arches, 516 metres, and the only crossing in Prague until 1841. Thirty baroque statues along the parapets, all of them copies. Come in the last hour of light and walk west.

  4. 20:15

    Dinner in the Lesser Town

    Eat

    Cross the bridge and walk two streets uphill before you sit down. The tables facing the water are charging for the address and not for the cooking.

With more time: If you arrive early, the Powder Tower and the Municipal House stand together five minutes east of the square: a fifteenth-century city gate next door to an art nouveau concert hall of 1912, with a cafe under a stained glass ceiling that is worth the detour by itself.

Day 2 in Prague

The castle at opening, a monastery library, and the long walk down

Be at the castle gates when they open. This is the most visited place in the country and the difference between nine in the morning and eleven is the difference between a hill and a scrum. Take tram 22 up so that you can walk down afterwards.

It is less a castle than a walled quarter, seven hectares of courtyards, palaces and gardens with a cathedral in the middle. Buy the short circuit rather than the long one. The cathedral was begun in 1344 and only finished in 1929, which is obvious from thirty metres away, and the small lane of coloured cottages built into the north wall was where the castle gunners lived before it became the most photographed alley in the city.

Then walk five minutes uphill rather than down, to the monastery on the ridge. Its two library halls, one theological and one philosophical, are baroque rooms lined floor to ceiling in gilded wood and old books, and the corridor between them holds a cabinet of curiosities that includes a pair of whale phalluses and a crocodile hanging from the ceiling. You look in from the doorways rather than walking through.

Come down through the orchards on the hillside afterwards. It is fifteen minutes of vineyard and apple trees with the whole city underneath you, and almost nobody does it.

  1. 09:00

    Prague Castle

    Nature

    Seat of Czech rulers since the ninth century and of the president now, a walled quarter rather than a single building. Go at opening. The guard changes on the hour and at noon there is a fanfare in the first courtyard.

  2. 11:30

    The Golden Lane

    Landmark

    A lane of small bright cottages built into the castle's north wall, home to gunners and later to goldsmiths, and to Kafka for a few months in 1916, in a house his sister rented. Included in the castle ticket and impossible to photograph without twenty other people in it.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch on the castle ridge

    Eat

    The lanes west of the castle towards the monastery have a couple of pubs that still charge Czech prices, which this close to the gates is close to a miracle.

  4. 14:00

    Strahov Monastery

    Religious

    A Premonstratensian monastery of 1143 on the hill above the castle, with two baroque library halls, a picture gallery and a corridor of curiosities including a hanging crocodile. You view the libraries from the doors; the gallery you walk through.

With more time: Petrin hill runs south from the monastery, with a funicular for the lazy and an iron lookout tower of 1891 at the top that is a fifth the size of the Eiffel Tower and stands high enough that the tip is level with it.

Day 3 in Prague

The other castle rock, where the composers are buried

Every visitor goes to one castle in Prague. There are two. Three kilometres upriver, on a rock above the Vltava, is the fortress the Czech princes held before the other hill was built, and it is free, quiet and green.

The church at the top has two black spires that you can see from half the city, and the ceiling and walls inside were painted in art nouveau patterns at the start of the last century, which is not something the guidebooks lead with and should be.

Beside it is the national cemetery, laid out in 1869 as a deliberate act of Czech nationalism when the language itself was still being argued over. Dvorak is here, and Smetana, and Mucha, and Capek who gave the world the word robot. It takes an hour, the plots are signposted, and on a weekday you may have it to yourself.

The ramparts on the river side are the best free view in Prague, better than the castle's because the castle is in it. Walk back along the embankment afterwards, or take the metro two stops.

  1. 09:30

    Vyšehrad

    Nature

    The older of Prague's two castle rocks, seat of the Premyslid princes before the hill opposite, now a walled park with baroque bastions and a Romanesque rotunda. Free, open all hours, and the ramparts look straight down the river.

  2. 11:00

    Basilica of St Peter and St Paul

    Religious

    Twin black spires added in a neo-Gothic rebuild finished in 1903, on a church founded in the eleventh century, with an interior painted wall to ceiling in art nouveau patterns between 1902 and 1903. Small charge, almost never busy.

  3. 12:15

    Vyšehrad cemetery

    Other

    The national cemetery, laid out in 1869, where Dvorak, Smetana, Mucha and Karel Capek are buried along with about six hundred other Czechs the country decided to keep. Free, signposted at the gate, and an hour is enough.

  4. 13:30

    Lunch below the rock

    Eat

    Walk down into Vysehrad's streets or on into Vinohrady, where the lunch menus are aimed at people who work nearby and cost about a third of old town prices.

With more time: The afternoon is open, and the museum on Wenceslas Square that covers the Communist decades is a good use of ninety minutes of it: propaganda posters, an interrogation room and a great deal of unhappy furniture.

Day 4 in Wrocław

The long train into Silesia, and a first evening on the market square

Take a morning train and read something. Four and a half hours east and then north, through Pardubice, up the Klodzko valley between wooded hills, over the watershed and down onto the Silesian plain. It is one of the better long journeys in central Europe and it costs almost nothing.

Wroclaw's market square is the second largest in Poland and does not look like anything you have just left. The town hall in the middle of it was worked on from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth and came out as a piece of late Gothic showing off, with an astronomical clock on the east gable and a beer cellar underneath that has been serving since 1273.

Start counting dwarfs while you walk. There are several hundred bronze figures the size of a hand scattered around the city, on kerbs, drainpipes and window ledges. They are not whimsy for tourists: they descend from the Orange Alternative, an absurdist protest movement of the 1980s that painted dwarfs over the spots where the militia had covered up anti-government graffiti, on the reasonable theory that arresting somebody for drawing a dwarf makes a government look ridiculous.

Finish with the church on the west side. Its tower is a hundred metres and change, the climb is about three hundred steps, and the platform at the top is the way to understand how flat Silesia is.

  1. 09:00

    Train to Wroclaw

    Travel

    Praha hlavni nadrazi to Wroclaw Glowny, about four and a half hours, direct, a few departures a day. Buy online in advance for the cheap fare.

  2. 14:00

    Late lunch off the square

    Eat

    Drop the bag first. The milk bars near the university do soup, pierogi and a compote for the price of a coffee on the square itself.

  3. 15:30

    Market Square

    Architecture

    The second largest market square in Poland, with an island of buildings in the middle of it rather than open ground, and painted merchant fronts on all four sides. Most of what you see was rebuilt after 1945 from photographs and surviving fragments.

  4. 16:45

    Old Town Hall

    Historic

    Late Gothic, worked on for two hundred and fifty years, with an astronomical clock of 1580 on the east gable and carved corbels of drinkers and musicians. The cellar bar below it claims to have been pouring since 1273.

  5. 18:00

    St. Elizabeth's Church

    Religious

    The big brick Gothic church off the north-west corner of the square, with a tower of just over ninety metres. About three hundred steps to the viewing platform and no lift; the reward is the whole city plus a great deal of flat Silesia.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner around Salt Square

    Eat

    The small square west of the town hall sells flowers around the clock and has bars on every side. Polish food here costs about half what the same plate does in Prague.

Day 5 in Wrocław

Cathedral Island in the morning, and a painting that was hidden for forty years

Wroclaw sits on the Oder and four of its tributaries and has more than a hundred bridges, which is the kind of statistic a city repeats until people believe it and which happens in this case to be true. The oldest part of it is an island, reached over a bridge with a lamplighter who still lights the gas lamps by hand every evening.

The cathedral on it was gutted in 1945 and put back over the following twenty years. Take the lift up the south tower for the view over the island's other churches, which are stacked close enough together to look like a stage set.

The afternoon belongs to one painting, and it is worth the whole day. The panorama is a hundred and fourteen metres round and fifteen high, painted in 1894 in Lwow to mark a battle a century earlier in which Polish peasants with scythes beat a Russian force. It came west with the expelled population in 1946, and then the authorities kept it rolled up in storage for forty years, because celebrating a Polish victory over a Russian army was not something the People's Republic wished to encourage. It went on show in 1985. You stand in the middle in the dark with a soundtrack and it works completely.

  1. 09:30

    Cathedral Island

    Nature

    The oldest part of the city, on an island in the Oder, reached over a bridge whose gas lamps are still lit by hand at dusk. Several Gothic churches within two hundred metres of each other and a botanic garden behind them.

  2. 11:00

    Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

    Religious

    Brick Gothic, begun in 1244, burned out in the fighting of 1945, reconsecrated in 1951 and only given its spires back in 1991. A lift runs up the south tower to a platform over the island. Modest dress and a small charge for the towers.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch by the market hall

    Eat

    The covered market hall of 1908 is five minutes from the island, still sells fruit and cheese to people who live here, and has counters upstairs doing lunch for very little.

  4. 14:30

    Panorama Racławicka

    Culture

    A painting 114 metres round and 15 metres high, made in 1894, brought from Lwow in 1946 and kept in storage until 1985 because its subject was a Polish victory over a Russian army. Timed entry, about half an hour inside, and the ticket also covers the national museum next door.

With more time: With a spare hour, the Centennial Hall is three kilometres east: a reinforced concrete dome of 1913 that was the largest in the world when it went up, listed by UNESCO, with a fountain in front of it that puts on a show on the hour in summer.

Day 6 in Kraków

East to Krakow, and the trumpet on the hour

Three and a half hours through Opole and the Katowice coalfield, which is not scenic and is over quickly. Krakow Glowny puts you on the north side of the old town, ten minutes from the square through a park.

The square is two hundred metres on each side, the largest medieval one in Europe, and the long hall down the middle of it has been a covered market since the fourteenth century. It still sells amber and sheepskin upstairs from a museum of nineteenth-century Polish painting, and walking through it is free.

On the hour, a trumpeter plays four times from the tower of the church on the corner, once to each point of the compass, and stops abruptly halfway through the phrase. The story is that a watchman was shot in the throat sounding the alarm during a Mongol raid in the thirteenth century, and the call has been broken off at that note ever since. Historians are unconvinced and nobody in Krakow cares.

Go inside before the church closes. The altarpiece is carved in limewood by Veit Stoss between 1477 and 1489, thirteen metres of it, and its shutters are opened every morning at noon in front of whoever is standing there.

  1. 09:30

    Train to Krakow

    Travel

    Wroclaw Glowny to Krakow Glowny, about three and a half hours, roughly every two hours. Polish intercity tickets carry a seat number, so book rather than turn up on a Friday.

  2. 13:30

    Late lunch near the Planty

    Eat

    Between the station and the square, the streets around the university have milk bars and student canteens where a full lunch costs less than a beer on the square.

  3. 15:00

    Main Market Square

    Visit

    Two hundred metres square, laid out in 1257 and the largest medieval square in Europe, with the whole of the old town's evening happening on it. The cafes on the edge charge for the view and the tables one street back do not.

  4. 16:15

    Cloth Hall

    Visit

    A covered cloth market down the middle of the square since the fourteenth century, given its arcades and gargoyles in a Renaissance rebuild after a fire in 1555. Amber and souvenirs at ground level, nineteenth-century Polish painting upstairs.

  5. 17:30

    St Mary's Basilica

    Visit

    Two mismatched brick towers on the corner of the square, with a trumpet call sounded from the taller one every hour and cut off mid phrase. Inside is Veit Stoss's limewood altarpiece of 1477 to 1489, about thirteen metres high, with its shutters opened each day at noon.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner in the old town

    Eat

    Anywhere off the square. Order zurek, a sour rye soup served with sausage and half an egg, which is the thing Poland does that nobody else does.

Day 7 in Kraków

The castle rock, the royal tombs and the oldest university building in Poland

Wawel is a limestone rock above a bend in the Vistula with a cathedral and a royal palace on top of it, and it has been the symbolic centre of Poland for a thousand years. Go early: the numbered tickets for the palace interiors are limited by the hour and run out in summer.

The cathedral is where Polish monarchs were crowned for four centuries and where most of them are buried, in chapels added over six centuries so that no two look alike. The gilded dome on the south side went up in the 1520s and is the best Renaissance building north of the Alps. Down in the crypt lie kings, national poets, and, since 2010, the president who died in the air crash at Smolensk, whose burial here was argued about for a fortnight.

Afternoon in the university. The oldest building of the Jagiellonian, founded in 1364, is a Gothic quadrangle with an arcaded courtyard, and its guided tour takes you through the lecture halls, the treasury and and a room of early scientific instruments that Copernicus, a student here in the 1490s, would have known.

The clock in the courtyard plays and a procession of wooden figures comes out several times a day, which is the second-best mechanical show on this trip and the least crowded.

  1. 09:00

    Wawel

    Historic

    The castle hill above the Vistula: a Renaissance palace round an arcaded courtyard, a cathedral, an armoury and the state rooms. Separate timed tickets for each part, limited per hour, and they sell out by mid morning in summer. The grounds themselves are free.

  2. 11:15

    Wawel Cathedral

    Religious

    The coronation and burial church of Poland, with chapels from six centuries stuck onto a Gothic core and a gilded Renaissance dome of the 1520s on the south side. Kings, poets and national heroes are in the crypt. The tower holds a bell of 1520 that takes eight people to ring.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch below the hill

    Eat

    Walk down the ramp towards Kazimierz and eat in the streets around Stradom rather than at the foot of the castle, where you are paying the coach premium.

  4. 15:00

    Collegium Maius

    Historic

    The oldest building of a university founded in 1364, round a Gothic arcaded courtyard, with a treasury, a hall of early instruments and a fifteenth-century brass globe showing the New World. Guided visits only and worth booking in the morning.

With more time: The Planty, the ring of park where the walls used to be, loops right round the old town in about forty minutes and is how the city gets from one place to another without touching a road.

Day 8 in Kraków

Kazimierz, the cemetery wall, and the factory across the river

Kazimierz was founded in 1335 as a separate town and became the Jewish quarter of Krakow for five hundred years. About sixty thousand Jews lived in Krakow in 1939. A few thousand were left alive in 1945.

It is not a memorial district. Seven synagogues survive within a few streets, several of them working, and the quarter around them has become the part of Krakow that stays up latest, which is a strange and not unhappy combination. Walk it in the morning before the bars open.

The Renaissance synagogue on Szeroka has a cemetery behind it that was used from 1535 to 1800 and was smashed up in the occupation. When the stones were recovered after the war, the fragments too broken to re-erect were set into the boundary wall as a mosaic, which is the most affecting thing in the quarter and costs a few zloty to walk into.

In the afternoon cross the river to Podgorze, where the ghetto was, and go to the enamel factory. Oskar Schindler's plant is now a museum, and it is not really about Schindler: it is a re-creation of Krakow under occupation, street by street, room by room, and it takes two hours and leaves a mark. Book the ticket a couple of days ahead.

  1. 09:30

    Kazimierz

    Visit

    A separate royal town from 1335 and the Jewish quarter of Krakow for five centuries, now the quarter with the best bars and the last empty lots. Seven surviving synagogues sit within a few hundred metres of each other around Szeroka.

  2. 11:15

    Remuh Synagogue

    Religious

    A small working synagogue of 1553 on Szeroka, with the cemetery behind it in use from 1535 to 1800. Headstones smashed in the occupation were reassembled after the war, and the fragments beyond saving were set into the boundary wall.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch on Plac Nowy

    Eat

    The round brick building in the middle of the square sells zapiekanka, an open baguette with mushrooms and cheese, from hatches around the outside. It costs a few zloty and is the local hangover cure.

  4. 14:00

    Schindler's Enamel Factory

    Visit

    The enamel works Oskar Schindler ran, now a museum of Krakow under German occupation rather than a museum about him: reconstructed streets, a tram, a barber's shop, and his office kept as it was. Two hours, timed tickets, book two or three days ahead.

With more time: The square outside the factory, Plac Bohaterow Getta, is where the ghetto's deportations were assembled, and it now holds seventy empty steel chairs standing for the furniture left behind when the ghetto was cleared. The pharmacy on the corner stayed open through the whole period and is a tiny museum.

Day 9 in Kraków

A last loop round the walls, then out

Krakow pulled down its medieval walls in the 1820s and, instead of building a boulevard on the ring like Vienna did, planted a park. The result is four kilometres of trees and gravel paths looping right round the old town, about forty minutes at a walk, and it is the nicest last hour the city can offer.

One stretch of the fortifications was left standing on the north side, so the walk passes a gate and a round brick barbican of 1499 with three metre walls and seven turrets, which was built against the Ottomans and never needed.

Then breakfast, and out. The train to the airport leaves from the main station every half hour and takes under twenty minutes.

  1. 09:00

    Planty

    Historic

    Four kilometres of park laid out in the 1820s on the line of the demolished city walls, wrapping the old town completely. Forty minutes at a walk, benches the whole way, and it passes the surviving gate and barbican on the north side.

  2. 10:30

    Breakfast near the Barbican

    Eat

    Floriańska and the streets beside it do coffee and cheesecake from eight. Polish sernik is denser than the German kind and better with black coffee.

  3. 12:00

    To the airport or onward

    Travel

    The airport train runs from Krakow Glowny every half hour and takes about twenty minutes. For onward travel, Warsaw is two and a half hours north and there is a night train to Budapest.

Before you go

The two train journeys

Prague to Wroclaw is the long one: about four and a half hours, direct, a few times a day, running east to Pardubice and then north through the Klodzko valley and over the old Silesian border. It is a beautiful line and an unhurried one. Booked a week ahead it costs less than lunch.

Wroclaw to Krakow is about three and a half hours on a Polish intercity through Opole and Katowice, running roughly every two hours. Reserve a seat, because Polish intercity fares are seat-specific and the trains do fill on Fridays.

Both journeys are station to station in the middle of each city. Wroclaw's is a neo-Gothic castle of a building from the 1850s, which is a pleasant thing to arrive at.

Money and prices

Two currencies, neither of them the euro: Czech koruna, then Polish zloty. Cards work everywhere including on buses and trams. Avoid the exchange booths in central Prague, which are the worst in Europe for hidden commission, and use a bank machine while refusing its offer to do the conversion for you.

Prices fall as you go east. Prague charges Vienna money within sight of the Old Town Square and Czech money four streets away. Wroclaw is the cheapest of the three by some distance. Krakow is cheap everywhere except the main square.

What to book

Very little. The Prague castle circuit and the Krakow salt mines take walk-ins outside July and August. Schindler's factory museum in Krakow sells timed tickets and does sell out, so buy two or three days ahead.

If you plan to add Auschwitz, book it directly with the memorial site as far ahead as you can, because guided entry slots in summer go a month or more in advance and the tours sold in the Krakow main square are the same slots at three times the price.

When to come

May, June and September. This is a continental climate: July and August are hot and the Prague old town is genuinely unpleasant at midday, while January can sit below minus ten for a week.

December is the exception worth planning for. All three cities run large Christmas markets, Krakow's fills the whole main square under the Cloth Hall, and Wroclaw's is the best value of the three.

Eating and drinking

Beer in Bohemia, vodka and increasingly good beer in Poland. Czech pubs add up your bill on a slip of paper at your elbow and will keep bringing beer until you put a mat over the glass.

In Poland, look for a milk bar, a bar mleczny: a subsidised canteen left over from the Communist period, still trading, serving pierogi and soup at prices that look like a misprint. Wroclaw and Krakow both have several and they are not a museum piece, they are lunch.

Two train tickets and a long afternoon of Silesian countryside, through three cities that have each been governed from a different capital and one of which swapped its entire population in the space of two years. Prague kept everything and pays for it in crowds, Wroclaw was emptied and refilled and is the better for being unvisited, and Krakow is the one Poland still measures itself against.

Go in May or September, book the Krakow factory museum before you leave, and take the long train through the Klodzko valley in daylight.

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

Is Wroclaw really worth two nights?
Yes, and it is the stop people are most surprised by. It has the second largest market square in Poland, a cathedral island with gas lamps still lit by hand, a nineteenth-century panorama that was politically unshowable for forty years, and prices about a third below Prague. It is also the only place on this route where you are not sharing the centre with a coach party.
Could I add Auschwitz from Krakow?
You can, and it needs a whole day and a fourth night rather than being squeezed in. Oswiecim is about ninety minutes from Krakow by bus or train, entry is free but requires a booked slot, and in summer the guided slots go a month or more ahead. Book directly with the memorial rather than through an agency on the main square.
Which way round should I go?
West to east, as written. Prague is the easiest of the three to fly into and the hardest to arrive in tired, Wroclaw works as an unpressured middle, and Krakow rewards being the place you are not rushing to leave. Going the other way is reasonable if your flights are cheaper that way; nothing about the route depends on the direction.
Is the Prague to Wroclaw train really four and a half hours?
Roughly, yes, and it is direct only a few times a day, so check the timetable before you commit to a departure. The line runs a long way round through the Klodzko valley, which is why the journey takes longer than the distance suggests and also why it is worth doing by daylight rather than in the dark.
Can I copy this and change it?
Yes. The two edits worth considering are a fourth night in Krakow for Auschwitz or the Wieliczka salt mines, and swapping the Wroclaw stop for two nights in Olomouc if you would rather stay in the Czech Republic and travel less far.