Three days in Poznań: the city Poland began in, and the one everybody skips

Two nights in Greater Poland: goats on the town hall at noon, the crypt where the Piasts are buried, a lake with a rowing course on it, and the Kaiser's castle by the station.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Poznań
Places
8 across 3 days
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The Polish state starts here, or near enough. A duke called Mieszko was probably baptised on the island in the middle of this city in 966, the first bishop in Poland sat here, and eight of the earliest rulers are buried in the cathedral crypt. Then the Piasts moved south to Kraków, Poznań took a back seat, and it has been quietly getting on with things ever since.

What it got on with was business. Poznań is halfway between Berlin and Warsaw, it was Prussian for over a century, and it now runs the biggest trade fair grounds in the country, which means it has money, a large student population, and no need to charm anybody. It is the least touristy of Poland's big cities and it feels like it: the square is full of people who live here.

Two nights is the right length. One day for the old town, one for the island where it all started and the lake beyond, and a last morning for the castle the Kaiser built next to the station. Add a third night only if you want the lake properly, or if you have come for a fair, in which case the hotels will already have told you.

Highlights

  • Two mechanical goats that come out of the town hall roof at noon and butt heads twelve times
  • The crypt where the first rulers of Poland are buried, under the oldest cathedral in it
  • A Renaissance town hall that survived, in a square that did not
  • The last castle built for a German emperor, later given a study by Albert Speer
  • St Martin's croissants, which are a protected product and hard to finish on your own

Where to stay

Poznań, two nights

The city is arranged along the Warta. On the west bank is the old town, a compact grid around a very large square, with the shopping streets and the old brewery to the south and the castle and fair grounds to the west. On an island in the river is the cathedral quarter, which is where the whole thing started and is now three churches, a seminary and very little else.

East of the river the city opens out into parks, with a long artificial lake and a zoo behind them. That is where Poznań spends its weekends, and it is a twenty minute walk or a short tram ride from the square.

Sleep on or near the square. It is central, walkable and, outside fair weeks, cheap. The streets immediately around the main station are the one part of the centre worth avoiding after dark.

Day by day

Day 1 in Poznań

Stary Rynek, the goats at noon, and the Jesuit church

Be on the square before midday. At noon two mechanical goats come out of a hatch below the town hall clock and butt their horns together twelve times, a small piece of theatre that has been running since the sixteenth century, and the whole square stops and looks up for ninety seconds.

The town hall underneath them is the reason to be here anyway. It was Gothic, then rebuilt in the 1550s by an architect from Lugano into a three-tier Renaissance loggia that has a decent claim to being the finest secular Renaissance building north of the Alps. It survived the war, which the rest of the square did not: everything around it is a careful post-war reconstruction, and the block of little houses standing in the middle of the square is where the market traders lived.

In the afternoon, walk two minutes south to the old Jesuit church, which is the other thing in Poznań that stops people mid-sentence. It is high baroque, pink and gold, with marbled columns the height of the nave, and it has a Ladegast organ of the 1870s that is played free on Thursday evenings.

  1. 11:00

    Stary Rynek

    Historic

    One of the largest and best of the Polish market squares, with a free-standing island of houses in the middle of it and colonnaded fronts on every side. Almost entirely rebuilt after 1945. Cafes all round, and the terraces on the eastern side get the evening sun.

  2. 12:30

    Town Hall

    Architecture

    Renaissance, rebuilt by Giovanni Battista di Quadro from the 1550s, and one of the few buildings on the square to come through the war. The goats appear at noon. Inside is the city museum, and the painted Great Hall ceiling is worth the ticket on its own.

  3. 15:00

    The City Church of St. Stanislaus and Our Lady

    Visit

    The old Jesuit church, now the parish church of the old town, reopened in 2007 after a full restoration. Enormous baroque interior in pink and gold. Free organ recitals on Thursday evenings and organ music at most services.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner off the square

    Eat

    The streets running west off the Rynek have the kitchens locals use, and prices drop noticeably the moment you leave the colonnades.

With more time: Two small museums on the square are better than they sound: two thousand instruments from all over the world in one, including a room of Chopin material, and a set of lit models of the medieval city in the crypt of the Franciscan church on the hill above. Behind them, the remains of the royal castle hold a collection of glass, silver and furniture and give you the square from above.

Day 2 in Poznań

The island where Poland started, then the lake

Cross to Ostrów Tumski, which is where a duke of the Polanie put a stronghold in the tenth century and where his son built the first cathedral in the country. The current building is mostly a post-war reconstruction of the Gothic one, but the chapels around the ambulatory came through the bombing, and the gilded chapel on the east end holds a monument to Mieszko I and his son Bolesław the Brave.

Go down to the crypt. There are the foundations of the tenth and eleventh century churches under the present floor, and what is thought to be the font in which the duke was baptised in 966, which is the moment Poland is generally dated from. Eight early rulers are buried here.

The heritage centre on the far bank is the other half of the story and better than it looks from outside: a concrete box on the water, entirely given over to explaining what happened on this island and why it mattered, with a good audio guide and a roof terrace facing the cathedral. Then follow the river east into the park to the lake, which is a rowing course two kilometres long with a footpath the whole way round and the city's weekend happening on both banks.

  1. 10:00

    St. Peter's and Paul's Cathedral

    Religious

    The first cathedral in Poland, on the island where the state began. The Golden Chapel and the ring of side chapels survived 1945; the crypt has the foundations of the earliest church and the presumed baptismal font. Small charge for the crypt, and worth it.

  2. 12:00

    Brama Poznania ICHOT

    Historic

    An interactive centre about Ostrów Tumski and the founding of Poland, across a footbridge from the cathedral. Audio guide included, ninety minutes at a normal pace, and a rooftop view straight back at the towers.

  3. 14:00

    Lunch on the way to the park

    Eat

    There is little on the island itself. Eat on the east bank before you head into the park, or carry something and use one of the benches by the water.

  4. 15:15

    Malta Lake

    Other

    An artificial lake built as a rowing course and used for international regattas, with a five kilometre path around it, a swimming spot at the southern end and a dry ski slope on the far bank. This is where Poznań runs, cycles and drinks coffee at the weekend.

With more time: A narrow gauge park railway, sometimes steam-hauled, runs along the lake from the edge of the centre to the zoo at the far end, which makes the whole afternoon easy with children. North of the old town, the Prussian citadel is now a park with a Commonwealth war cemetery in it and takes an hour.

Day 3 in Poznań

The Kaiser's castle, and 1956

Ten minutes west of the square, and conveniently on the way to the station, is one of the last castles built for a reigning emperor in Europe. Wilhelm II had it put up between 1905 and 1910 in a heavy neo-Romanesque that was meant to say the Germans had always been here, and he opened it himself. The courtyard at the back has a fountain copied from the lion court of the Alhambra.

Its later life is odder. It was the Polish president's residence between the wars, and then Hitler took it over and had Albert Speer's office redesign the interiors, including a study that was never used. The tower was 74 metres and lost about twenty of them to damage in 1945. Today it is an arts centre, with a cinema, a theatre and a cafe, and you can wander most of it for nothing.

Inside the same building is the museum of the June 1956 uprising, when workers from the locomotive factory walked out over pay and the protest turned into the first mass revolt against communist rule in the eastern bloc. It was put down with tanks within two days. The museum is small, cheap and specific, with a reconstructed tram of the kind used as a barricade.

  1. 10:00

    Imperial Castle

    Historic

    Built 1905 to 1910 for Wilhelm II by his Berlin court architect, remodelled under Speer during the occupation, now a culture centre with free access to most of the public rooms. Look for the Alhambra fountain in the rose courtyard at the back.

  2. 11:30

    The Museum of Poznań Uprising 1956

    Culture

    The workers' rising of June 1956, told in the castle basement with photographs, personal effects and a rebuilt tram. Costs a few złoty and is free on Saturdays. Half an hour, and the most important half hour in the building.

  3. 12:45

    Croissant and coffee before the train

    Eat

    Buy a St Martin's croissant from a licensed bakery on the way back to the station. One is enough for two people and it travels badly, so eat it on the platform.

With more time: With a later train, the old brewery complex south of the square is worth an hour: a nineteenth century industrial building turned into shops, bars, a cinema and a private art collection, with a courtyard that is one of the more pleasant places in the city to sit. The pedestrian street beside it has a bronze of a man pushing a bicycle, put up for a fictional radio character who speaks only in the local dialect.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Poznań sits on the main line between Berlin and Warsaw. Trains from Warsaw take about two and three quarter hours, from Berlin under three, and from Wrocław about two. The station is a fifteen minute walk or one tram stop from the old town.

Ławica airport is close in, with Ryanair, Wizz, LOT, KLM and Lufthansa. Buses 159 and 148 run every fifteen minutes and take around twenty-five minutes into town.

The centre is compact and mostly walkable. Trams and buses are cheap and a 24 hour ticket covers everything; validate paper tickets the moment you board, because the inspectors are frequent and the fine is not small. One local rule: a 24 hour ticket validated on a Friday evening runs until midnight on Sunday.

Trade fairs

The fair grounds are next to the main station and they run the biggest exhibitions in Poland. When a large fair is on, hotel prices in the city triple and rooms disappear entirely, which catches out a great many people who booked a city break on the wrong week.

The fair calendar is published a year ahead and is the single most useful thing to check before booking. Outside those weeks Poznań is one of the better value cities in the country.

Eating and drinking

The regional speciality is the rogal świętomarciński, a croissant the size of a forearm filled with white poppy seed, nuts and candied fruit. It has protected status, only bakeries with a licence may sell it under that name, and the city gets through an extraordinary quantity of them around 11 November. They are sold all year.

Otherwise, Greater Poland cooking runs to duck with apples and grey dumplings, potato dumplings made from raw potato, and pyry z gzikiem, boiled potatoes with curd cheese and cream, which is the local plate of comfort food and costs almost nothing.

The square has cafes on every side and the streets running off it have the better kitchens. There is a serious craft beer scene, and a converted nineteenth century brewery south of the centre now holds bars, a cinema and an art collection.

When to come

May to September for the riverbank, the lake and the terraces on the square. June is when the city is at its liveliest and also when the fair calendar is busiest, so check before booking.

November has the croissants at their best and a large procession on the eleventh. Winter is cold and grey, though the square with a light frost on it and nobody standing about is a fair reason to come.

Poznań does not sell itself, which is the best thing about it. There are no queues, no coach parties on the square, and no sense that anybody is putting on a show. What there is instead is the crypt where the country starts, a town hall good enough to have survived being copied, and a city that mostly gets on with earning a living.

Two nights and one train ticket is all it costs to find that out, and the line runs straight through anyway.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

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.

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Common questions

How many days do you need in Poznań?
Two nights is right. That gives a full day for the square and the old town, a full day for the cathedral island and the lake, and a last morning for the castle before a train. A third night only pays off if you want the lake and the parks properly.
Is Poznań worth a stop between Berlin and Warsaw?
Yes, and it is the obvious one: it sits on the main line, roughly halfway, and both legs are under three hours. Two nights here breaks a long journey and shows you a Polish city that is not on anybody's list, which is most of the appeal.
What are the goats about?
A sixteenth century story about two goats escaping a cook, running up the town hall tower and butting heads in front of the crowd. The mechanism has been reenacting it daily at noon ever since. It lasts about a minute and half the square films it.
When do the trade fairs happen and does it matter?
It matters a lot. Fairs run through much of the year at the grounds beside the station, and during a big one the hotels fill and prices multiply. Check the fair calendar before you book anything, especially in spring and autumn.
What should I eat in Poznań?
A St Martin's croissant, from a bakery licensed to make them, filled with white poppy seed. Then pyry z gzikiem, potatoes with curd cheese, and duck with apples if you are eating properly. The regional cooking is heavier and sweeter than in the south.
Can I change the order of these days?
Yes. Copy it into a trip of your own and rearrange. The one thing to keep is being on the square just before noon on the first day, which is the only fixed appointment in the whole plan.