Tarnów

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Tarnów ul. Jarzębinowa 9 willa Kwiatkowskiego A 63M 697946, Tarnów, Lesser Poland, Poland

Tarnow dworzec 5, Tarnów, Lesser Poland, Poland

Dworzec kolejowy w Tarnowie 1, Tarnów, Lesser Poland, Poland

Bima Starej Synagogi w Tarnowie, Tarnów, Lesser Poland, Poland

About Tarnów

Tarnów wears its Renaissance past lightly. Arcaded tenements in candy colours ring a sloping market square, a Gothic cathedral holds some of the finest tomb sculpture in Poland, and the town regularly records the warmest average temperatures in the country, which locals like to mention when the market cafes fill up in spring.

The town received Magdeburg rights in 1330 and grew rich under the Tarnowski family, whose most famous member, Hetman Jan Tarnowski, helped turn it into a model Renaissance town. Before the Second World War a large share of the population was Jewish; the surviving bimah of the Old Synagogue and the former mikveh, from where the first mass transport to Auschwitz left on 14 June 1940, keep that history visible. General Józef Bem, a hero of the 1848 revolutions, was born here and now rests in a mausoleum in Strzelecki Park.

Plan a day for the old town, cathedral and museums, then add St. Martin's Hill for castle ruins and a walk in the woods. Kraków is about an hour away by train, which makes Tarnów an easy and much quieter base for Lesser Poland.

Best seasonMay to September, when the market square terraces are open and the town is at its warmest

Ideal stay1-2 days

ArrivingDirect trains from Kraków take about an hour; the station is a short walk from the old town

Your Tarnów Bucket List: 11 Top Picks

Landmarks 3

Tarnów Market Square

The sloping Rynek is lined with burgher houses dating back to the 16th century, several of them with arcaded ground floors on the...

Tarnów Town Hall

Standing in the middle of the market square, the town hall began as a Gothic building and was remodelled in the 16th century with...

Tarnów Railway Station

Rebuilt in 1910 and carefully restored in the 21st century, Tarnów's station is widely admired as one of the handsomest in Poland,...

Churches 2

Tarnów Cathedral

The Cathedral Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a Gothic church whose interior is famous for its Renaissance...

St. Mary's Wooden Church Tarnów

Consecrated in 1462, this small Gothic church on the Burek is built entirely of larch wood and sits a few blocks south of the mark...

Museums 2

Diocesan Museum in Tarnów

Founded in 1888, this museum occupies a row of historic houses beside the cathedral, including the Mikołajowski House, one of the...

Ethnographic Museum in Tarnów

Housed in an 18th-century manor house on Krakowska Street, this branch of the Regional Museum is best known for its permanent exhi...

Jewish Heritage 2

Old Synagogue Bimah

Only the brick bimah, the raised platform for reading the Torah, survives from Tarnów's Old Synagogue, which was burned by German...

Tarnów Mikveh

The former Jewish ritual bathhouse was built in 1902 in an eclectic style mixing Moorish and Art Nouveau elements. During the occu...

History 1

Józef Bem Mausoleum

General Józef Bem, born in Tarnów in 1794 and a hero of the 1848 revolutions in Hungary, died in Aleppo in 1850 and was brought ho...

Viewpoints 1

St. Martin's Hill

On a wooded hill on the southern edge of Tarnów lie the remains of the castle of the Leliwa and Tarnowski families, whose earliest...

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