Lublin runs cheap even by Polish standards: Majdanek charges nothing, the parks and hills need no ticket, and a market lunch lands under 25 zł. Three days here can easily cost more in trolleybus fares than in entry fees.
Lublin's 13-hectare English-style park was laid out in 1837 along ul. Lipowa and keeps its wooden bandstand, rosarium and pond. Gates open 6:00 to 22:00 from May to September, and entry has never cost a złoty.
The main square was rebuilt in 2017 around a multimedia fountain that runs light-and-music shows nightly from around 21:00, April to October. The lawns, the Union of Lublin obelisk and the shows themselves cost nothing.
The State Museum at Majdanek, 4 km southeast on the Chełm road, preserves original barracks, gas chambers and the domed Mausoleum of ashes on the largely intact camp grounds. Admission is free, as is the outdoor route.
Czwartek Hill is Lublin's oldest settlement site, inhabited since around the 6th century and named for the Thursday markets once held on it. St Nicholas' Church crowns the top and the slope behind opens over Podzamcze.
Lublin is one of only three Polish cities with trolleybuses. A single ZTM ticket costs about 4 zł and a 24-hour pass around 12 zł, valid on the whole network including the routes out to Majdanek and the reservoir.
The green market off ul. Ruska trades roughly 6:00 to 16:00 Monday to Saturday: Lubelskie apples, smoked twaróg, jars of sour cherries and buckets of forest mushrooms in autumn. Most stalls take cash only.
Chatka Żaka, the UMCS student culture centre at ul. Radziszewskiego 16, runs a canteen and café where a two-course lunch lands around 18-25 zł with no student card required. Free gigs fill the basement most evenings.
The open-air bazaar spread below the castle on Podzamcze sells second-hand clothes, Ukrainian sweets, tools and cheap glasses of kompot most mornings through the week. Sunday draws the largest crowd of traders.
Bosko's ice-cream window on Krakowskie Przedmieście queues down the pavement in summer for natural gelato at roughly 8-10 zł a scoop, with the flavour list chalked up fresh each morning and changing daily.
The UMCS Botanical Garden fills 21 hectares of the Sławinek valley with a Japanese garden, rosarium, alpine section and an 18th-century wooden manor. Open daily around 9:00-18:00 from April to October.
This 280-hectare lake, dammed on the Bystrzyca in 1974, has free public beaches at Marina and Dąbrowa plus a flat cycling loop of about 14 km around the shore. Bus 25 reaches it from the centre in 25 minutes.
The skansen at ul. Warszawska 96 reassembles a whole Lublin-region countryside across 27 hectares: thatched cottages, a working windmill, a manor house and a wooden Orthodox church moved here beam by beam.
Górki Czechowskie is a belt of roughly 100 hectares of undeveloped loess ravines north of the centre, grazed by sheep and crossed by dirt paths. The ridge above ul. Willowa gives the widest free panorama of the city.