How the City Encourages Visitors to Explore
Kraków offers a broad and diverse tourism portfolio designed to respond to contemporary trends and visitor needs. Today, tourism promotion is about much more than showcasing historic landmarks. Above all, it is about inspiring people to rediscover the city, often beyond the traditional tourist routes.
Kraków is one of the leading tourism destinations in Poland and Europe, attracting millions of domestic and international visitors every year. For this reason, the Municipality of Kraków develops and promotes forms of tourism that encourage visitors to discover the city’s heritage in a more conscious and in-depth way, while also contributing to a more balanced distribution of tourist traffic across Kraków.
Creating an up-to-date tourism offer tailored to visitors’ needs is one of the many responsibilities of the Tourism Department of the Kraków City Office. This work is carried out in close cooperation with tourism organisations, industry representatives and experts in specific fields, including museum professionals, archivists and organisations dedicated to promoting local heritage.
Thanks to this cooperation, the city highlights not only its most important attractions, but also lesser-known places worth discovering, as well as Kraków’s culinary and craft traditions.
As a result, the city’s tourism offer continues to expand and improve every year. In recent years, this cooperation has led to the development of a number of city tourism routes that have become highly popular with both visitors and residents.
Most of these routes are virtual or point-based, offering considerable flexibility: visitors can decide when they want to explore and how much time they wish to spend. Access is free of charge, as the routes were developed using public funding. All that is needed is some free time, comfortable shoes and a smartphone or a printed publication such as a guidebook, walking guide or map.
Kraków’s most popular city tourism routes include:
Dragon Trail – a tourism route created on the initiative of Kraków residents. Its aim is to promote local history in an accessible and entertaining way through small dragon figurines placed around the city, naturally referring to the legend of the Wawel Dragon.
Kraków Women’s Trail – Krakowianki – a rich source of knowledge and inspiration for exploring Kraków through the stories of some of its most distinguished female residents. The trail also includes district-based variants, allowing visitors to focus, for example, on Krowodrza, Kazimierz or Podgórze.
Nowa Huta on the European Cultural Route ATRIUM – a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe. It offers an excellent opportunity to discover Nowa Huta, a district with a fascinating history and a complex, sometimes dissonant heritage. Today, it is also one of Kraków’s most interesting and peaceful districts, characterised by extensive green spaces.
MISTRZOWIE – Kraków Craft Trail – a route promoting knowledge of Kraków’s historic craft and culinary heritage. It enriches the city’s tourism offer by presenting the traditions of local entrepreneurship, with particular emphasis on important personalities, professions, crafts and flavours.
Historic Kraków Culinary Trail – a journey into the flavours of Kraków’s past. The culinary stories collected along the trail go far beyond simply moving from one location to another. They provide a key to understanding the everyday lives of Kraków’s former residents through their menus, food traditions and kitchen rituals.
The warmer months are particularly well suited to exploring the city, and Kraków remains an ideal destination for those wishing to discover both the history of Poland and the richness of the city’s local heritage.
The city actively encourages exploration. On www.krakow.pl, under the “Tourism” section, visitors can find a wide range of themed tourism routes. Some are accompanied by specially prepared walking maps and practical publications, available in several languages and downloadable as PDF files.
In addition, the section “Download tourist publications about Kraków” offers themed guidebooks in more than a dozen languages. These materials can help visitors plan both short stays and more in-depth experiences in Kraków. They also provide opportunities to discover the remarkable works left behind by artists of the Young Poland movement, as well as the treasures and unexpected stories found in Kraków’s museums.
All downloadable publications available in Polish can also be found online.
This article is part of a series of publications by the Municipality of Kraków focusing on the state of tourism in the city. The series aims to organise and clarify knowledge about key concepts and trends related to tourism, while analysing the strengths and weaknesses of Kraków’s tourism sector based on data. It also encourages active participation in social dialogue between residents, businesses and local government.