Kraków in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Kraków covers 20 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Kraków rewards a detour.

The Kraków route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 10 stops over about 1.9 km as the crow flies, from Dragon's Den (Smocza Jama) to St Florian's Gate (Brama Floriańska). ≈ 1.9 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Dragon's Den (Smocza Jama): At the foot of Wawel Hill, a real cave winds through ancient limestone, and outside it, a bronze dragon breathes actual fire on anyone who waits long enough. 0.2 km to the next stop
2. Wawel Royal Castle (Zamek Królewski na Wawelu): The royal castle crowning Wawel Hill, its three-tiered Renaissance courtyard among the finest north of the Alps, and once the ceremonial heart of the Polish kingdom. 0.1 km to the next stop
3. Wawel Cathedral (Katedra Wawelska): The coronation and burial church of Poland's kings, crowned by the gilded dome of the Renaissance Sigismund Chapel and the vast, rarely rung Sigismund Bell. 0.8 km to the next stop
4. Collegium Maius (Collegium Maius, Jagiellonian University): The oldest building of the Jagiellonian University, wrapped around a serene arcaded Gothic courtyard, where a young Copernicus once studied the heavens before turning them upside down. 0.3 km to the next stop
5. Town Hall Tower (Wieża ratuszowa): The lone Gothic tower on the square is all that survives of Kraków's medieval town hall, pulled down around 1820, and it leans, faintly, to this day. 0 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Cloth Hall (Sukiennice): The Renaissance cloth market marching down the middle of the square, amber and souvenir stalls below, a gallery of nineteenth-century Polish painting above, mascaron faces grinning from the roof. 0 km to the next stop
2. Main Market Square (Rynek Główny): One of Europe's largest medieval squares, a two-hundred-metre brick plain laid out in 1257 and still the beating heart of Kraków, trumpet calls, pigeons, cafes and all. 0 km to the next stop
3. Rynek Underground (Podziemia Rynku): Four metres beneath the square lies the medieval market that Kraków buried, a genuine excavated world of streets and cellars, reopened in 2010 as an immersive underground museum. 0.5 km to the next stop
4. Kraków Barbican (Barbakan): A round brick war-machine that squats outside the Old Town walls, bristling with seven turrets and once linked to St Florian's Gate by a fortified corridor across the moat. 0.1 km to the next stop
5. St Florian's Gate (Brama Floriańska): The grand northern gateway into the Old Town, its Gothic tower crowned by a Baroque helmet, and the starting point of the Royal Route to Wawel.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 10 stops over about 74 km as the crow flies, from Planty Park (Planty) to Auschwitz-Birkenau (Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau). ≈ 74 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Planty Park (Planty): A four-kilometre ring of green wraps the entire Old Town, growing where Kraków's medieval walls and moat once stood before the nineteenth century swept them away. 0.1 km to the next stop
2. St Mary's Basilica (Bazylika Mariacka): The brick-Gothic church whose mismatched towers crown the square, where a live trumpet call breaks off mid-note every hour, and a Veit Stoss altarpiece fills the dark inside. 1.1 km to the next stop
3. Plac Nowy (New Square): By day a flea market, by night the pulsing centre of Kazimierz nightlife, and at its heart a little round hall serving Kraków's legendary late-night zapiekanka. 0.1 km to the next stop
4. Kazimierz: Once a royal town of its own and for centuries the heart of Jewish Kraków, Kazimierz is now a quarter of old synagogues, courtyards, cafés and late-night music. 0.2 km to the next stop
5. Remuh Synagogue (Synagoga Remuh): The smallest of Kazimierz's historic synagogues is also its most alive, a 1553 prayer house still in use, beside a cemetery of Renaissance tombstones and a wall of broken graves. 0.1 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Old Synagogue (Stara Synagoga): The oldest surviving synagogue in Poland anchors the south end of Szeroka Street, a fortress-like Renaissance prayer hall that now tells the story of Kraków's Jews. 0.7 km to the next stop
2. Ghetto Heroes' Square (Plac Bohaterów Getta): In the former Kraków Ghetto, seventy empty steel chairs mark the square where Jews were assembled before deportation to the camps in 1942 and 1943. 0.4 km to the next stop
3. Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory (Fabryka Emalia Oskara Schindlera): The plain Zabłocie building where Oskar Schindler kept roughly 1,100 Jewish workers alive now holds Kraków's unflinching museum of the whole city under Nazi occupation. 9.7 km to the next stop
4. Wieliczka Salt Mine (Kopalnia soli Wieliczka): A hundred metres underground, thirteenth-century miners carved chapels, statues and glittering chandeliers entirely from rock salt, including a vast cathedral of salt honouring St Kinga. 61 km to the next stop
5. Auschwitz-Birkenau (Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau): About 65 km west of Kraków lies the largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where some 1.1 million people were murdered, now a memorial and museum.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Where the route eats

Food and market stops on the Kraków tour, each with its own story in the app:

• Cloth Hall (Sukiennice): The Renaissance cloth market marching down the middle of the square, amber and souvenir stalls below, a gallery of nineteenth-century Polish painting above, mascaron faces grinning from the roof.

Updated: September 6, 2026

Full Kraków guide and all stops →