Wrocław has been Bohemian, Habsburg, Prussian, German and Polish — a city rebuilt after 1945 by expellees from Lviv who brought their books and their saints. Its history is layered in stone, brick and bullet holes across the Odra islands.
Poland's first fully Gothic cathedral, begun 1244 on the site of a 1000 AD bishopric founded by Bolesław Chrobry. Burned to 70% ruin in 1945 and rebuilt by 1951. Lift to the 91 m tower viewing deck runs 10:00-17:00 daily.
A rare double-decker church founded 1288 by Duke Henryk IV Probus as a two-storey structure — St Bartholomew below, Holy Cross above. Henryk's Gothic tomb slab sits inside; the original is in the National Museum.
Holds the Henryków Book, a 13th-century Cistercian chronicle containing the first sentence ever written in Polish ('day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai'), inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2015.
A 14th-century hall church on the island where Augustinian canons settled in 1150. Its crystal-vault ceiling is one of Europe's finest; the Romanesque tympanum from 1150 survives above a side portal, salvaged from the earlier church.
A 114 m × 15 m circular canvas of the 1794 Battle of Racławice, painted 1893 in Lviv and moved here with the expelled population in 1946. Hidden by the communist authorities until 1985. Timed entry with audio guide in 16 languages.
The 1857 neo-Gothic terminus, one of Europe's oldest surviving large stations. During the 80-day Festung Breslau siege of 1945 it was a Wehrmacht strongpoint; shrapnel scars remain on the outer walls facing Piłsudskiego.
Built 1829 in classicist style, it survived Kristallnacht because it stood inside a dense courtyard block. Used as a Nazi deportation assembly point; restored in 2010. Sits within a quarter holding a synagogue, Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox church.
Jerzy Kalina's 2005 bronze figures sink into the pavement on one side and rise on the other, marking martial law's 13 December 1981 crackdown. It stands on the exact corner where Orange Alternative happenings met riot police.
Max Berg's 1913 reinforced-concrete dome spans 65 m — the world's largest of its era — built for the centenary of the anti-Napoleonic uprising. UNESCO-listed in 2006. The Discovery Centre explains the engineering; hall access depends on events.
A working-class Breslau quarter that escaped the 1945 bombardment largely intact, then decayed for 50 years. Since 2010 its Wilhelmine tenements on Roosevelta and Łokietka have been restored, exposing German shop signs beneath the plaster.
Housed in the bus depot where the August 1980 Wrocław strike began. The permanent exhibition covers 1945-1989: the expulsion of Germans, the arrival of Poles from the eastern borderlands, and Solidarity. Closed Tuesdays.
The last surviving fragment of Wrocław's 17th-century Prussian bastion ring, converted into a promenade in 1867 with a neo-Renaissance colonnade. Its bunker below served as the Festung Breslau command post in spring 1945.