🇵🇱 Poland · Lesser Poland and the Tatras (Kraków)
If Kraków is the historic soul of Poland, Zakopane is its mountain soul. At the foot of the Tatras — the country's only alpine-type range, with peaks above 2,400 metres — this town is Poland's great destination for nature and adventure: the base for walking through storybook valleys, climbing summits with staggering views, skiing in winter and discovering a culture of its own, that of the 'górale', the highlanders of the Carpathians, with their music, their wooden architecture and their unmistakable food.
Zakopane has two sides that complement each other. On one hand, the town: the busy pedestrian street Krupówki, full of stalls, restaurants and music, the churches and wooden villas in the characteristic 'Zakopane style' created by the artist Stanisław Witkiewicz, the funicular to the Gubałówka ridge with its panorama of the Tatras. On the other, the mountains: the cable car to Kasprowy Wierch, the walk to the beautiful glacial lake Morskie Oko ('the Eye of the Sea'), and dozens of trails through the valleys of Tatra National Park.
This guide helps you organise the visit: how to get there from Kraków, how to reach the trailheads on the local minibuses, which walks and viewpoints to choose for your level, how much the cable cars and the park entry cost, where to try the smoked cheese 'oscypek' and why, if you can, it is worth sleeping in the mountains so you can start early. A perfect change of air after the cities, and one of the most beautiful natural areas in central Europe.
Until the nineteenth century, Zakopane was a modest village of shepherds and iron miners at the southern edge of Poland, inhabited by the 'górale', the highlanders of the Carpathians, with their own culture, dialect and traditions. At the end of the nineteenth century, Polish doctors, artists and intellectuals 'discovered' the place: mountain air was recommended against tuberculosis, and Zakopane became a climatic health resort and a vibrant cultural and artistic centre, above all under Austrian rule in the region of Galicia, when the town was a refuge for the Polish national spirit. The painter and architect Stanisław Witkiewicz created the 'Zakopane style' there, inspired by mountain wooden architecture. In the twentieth century it established itself as the capital of Polish winter sport and mountaineering. Today it is the country's main mountain destination. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Historic Poland at its purest: Kraków, the royal capital for centuries, with Wawel, the university of 1364 and the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz; the salt of Wieliczka; the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp; and the mountains of the góral people at Zakopane.
Read the history of Lesser Poland and the Tatras (Kraków) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it was a tourist destination, Zakopane was a remote, poor village at the southern edge of Poland, at the foot of the Tatras, inhabited by the 'górale' (literally, 'the people of the mountain'), the highlanders of the Carpathians. These settlers, whose first permanent villages in the area date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, lived from sheep farming, from grazing on the high meadows, from working small iron deposits and from whatever they could wrest from difficult land and a harsh climate.
Isolated among the mountains, the górale developed a culture of their own, strong and highly distinctive, which still defines Zakopane's identity today: their own dialect (the 'gwara góralska'), unmistakable music and dance, richly embroidered traditional dress, a wooden architecture adapted to snow and a cuisine based on lamb, potatoes, sauerkraut and, above all, smoked sheep's cheeses such as the famous 'oscypek'. They also cultivated a strong sense of community, pride and independence.
For centuries this mountain world stayed on the margins of the country's 'official' history. After the partitions of Poland the region belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (within Galicia), but in practice the górale went on living by their ancestral traditions. Nobody then imagined that this village of shepherds was about to become one of the best-loved places in all of Poland.
The great change in Zakopane's history came in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Polish doctors, scientists and travellers 'discovered' the virtues of the place. A key figure was Dr Tytus Chałubiński, a physician from Warsaw who from the 1870s promoted Zakopane as a climatic health resort: the pure, dry mountain air was thought good for treating respiratory illness, above all tuberculosis, then an incurable scourge.
Patients soon began arriving in search of health, but so, above all, did Polish artists, writers, intellectuals and patriots who found in Zakopane something more than a health resort. At a time when Poland did not exist as a state — it was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria — the Austrian zone of Galicia enjoyed greater cultural freedom, and Zakopane became a refuge for the Polish national spirit, a place where the country's culture, art and identity could flourish away from the censorship of the other empires.
The shepherds' village was transformed at great speed into a vibrant cultural and holiday centre. Villas, guesthouses and hotels were built; the railway arrived in 1899, connecting Zakopane with Kraków and the rest of the country; and the town began to attract the cream of Polish culture. Writers, painters, composers and scientists made Zakopane their place of inspiration and encounter, laying the foundations of its fame.
Among the many figures who came to Zakopane at the end of the nineteenth century, one left an indelible architectural mark: the painter, architect and art theorist Stanisław Witkiewicz. Fascinated by the traditional wooden architecture of the górale — with its steep roofs, carved eaves and typical decoration — Witkiewicz had an ambitious idea: to turn that mountain folk art into a genuine Polish national style, at a moment when the country was seeking to assert its identity against the powers occupying it.
So, in the 1890s, was born the 'Zakopane style' (styl zakopiański), which Witkiewicz expressed in wooden villas of his own design, such as the famous Villa Koliba (1892-1893, today a museum of this style) and Villa Pod Jedlami. The style combined the forms and ornament of góral cabins with the needs of modern middle-class residences, and it aspired to be applied not only to houses but to furniture, objects and even churches. It was a whole aesthetic and patriotic movement.
The 'Zakopane style' defined the town's image forever and helped preserve and dignify the material culture of the górale. Even today, walking through Zakopane means admiring those wooden villas, the traditional churches and the old cemetery of Pęksowy Brzyzek, with its carved headstones, where artists and figures connected with the town rest. It was also in this setting that, decades later, the eccentric artist and writer Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz ('Witkacy'), Stanisław's son, would grow up, one of the most singular figures in twentieth-century Polish culture.
Through the twentieth century, Zakopane consolidated its double identity: great cultural centre and Polish capital of the mountains and winter sport. Mountaineering and skiing developed strongly; the first cable cars and funiculars were built — the famous cable car to Kasprowy Wierch opened in 1936, and the funicular to Gubałówka shortly afterwards — and the town became the venue for international-level sporting competitions, including world skiing championships. The Wielka Krokiew ski jump became a symbol of the town.
The Second World War brought Nazi occupation here too (1939-1945). Because of its border position, Zakopane had a particular role: it was a transit point for clandestine courier and escape routes into Hungary across the mountains, and at the same time a place of repression. The górale were the target of Nazi attempts at manipulation (the failed project of creating a supposed 'Goralenvolk nation' separate from Poland), which the great majority rejected, staying loyal to the Polish cause.
After the war, under the communist regime, Zakopane went on growing as a mass tourist destination and as Poland's winter sports capital, very popular among workers of the Eastern bloc. Polish mountaineering lived through a golden age, and out of the Tatras and Zakopane came some of the best climbers in the world, who would lead the great Himalayan conquests of the 1970s and 1980s. The town kept its strong góral identity despite the crowds.
The growing numbers and tourist development raised, already in the twentieth century, the need to protect the extraordinary nature of the Tatras. In 1954 Tatra National Park (Tatrzański Park Narodowy, TPN) was created, protecting the Polish sector of the range — its twin, TANAP, protects the Slovak side. The park safeguards a high mountain landscape unique in Poland: peaks above 2,400 metres, glacial lakes such as Morskie Oko, valleys, forests, and wildlife that includes chamois, marmots, lynx and brown bears. In 1992 UNESCO designated the Tatra biosphere reserve, covering both sides of the border.
That protection coexists, not without tension, with mass tourism. Zakopane is today, by an enormous margin, Poland's main mountain destination: it receives millions of visitors a year, drawn by hiking in summer, skiing in winter, the thermal baths, góral food and the atmosphere of Krupówki street. Its popularity has a downside: in high season, trails such as the one to Morskie Oko and streets such as Krupówki fill with people, and the balance between development and conservation is a permanent debate.
Even so, Zakopane keeps its magic and its strong personality. Góral culture is still very much alive — in the music, the dress, the food, the wooden 'karczmy' with live folk performance — the Zakopane style architecture still stands, and you only have to move a little away from the busiest areas to find yourself alone with the grandeur of the Tatras. It is still, as it was more than a century ago, the place where Poles go to breathe mountain air, to walk among peaks and to reconnect with one of the most authentic expressions of their culture.