Krakow's World Heritage Sites 

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Krakow, Poland and its vicinity. 

Such monuments as Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China are important to the entire humankind, and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has listed them all as the world heritage sites. Several of those world's treasures are in Krakow or nearby.

Krakow Old Town Historical District
Poland’s prime tourist attraction, the country's capital since 1038 to 1791, Krakow boasts numerous landmarks. Its historic area's grid of streets with the huge central Grand Square, Europe's largest in the Middle Ages, dates from 1257 and seems the last stage in the perfection of medieval city planning. It is also the best example of that art.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine
Millions of visitors, the crowned heads and such celebrities as Goethe and Sarah Bernhardt among them, have enthused over that subterranean world of labyrinthine passages, giant caverns, underground lakes and chapels with sculptures in the crystalline salt and rich ornamentation carved in the salt rock. The last 900 years, when the Wieliczka Salt Mine has been worked, produced 200 kilometers of passages as well as 2,040 caverns of varied size.

Auschwitz
The site of the Nazi notorious Auschwitz death camp is an hour’s drive from Krakow. Between June 1941 and January 1945 about one million men, women and children perished in the three Auschwitz concentration camps–i.e. Auschwitz proper, Birkenau and Monowitz–and their more than forty sub-camps.

Calvary Sanctuary in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska
400-year-old vast complex of 42 churches and chapels of all shapes and sizes in addition to the central basilica and the Franciscan monastery is biggest such compound in Europe.

Wooden Churches of Malopolska
Hundreds of centuries-old timber churches grace the landscape of the Malopolska (Lesser Poland) province around Krakow. Four of them have been entered in the UNESCO List of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage in 2003. Those four are situated in the villages of Sekowa, Binarowa, Lipnica Murowana and Debno Podhalanskie. The Wooden Architecture Route links them with 233 other places in Malopolska that boast ancient timber buildings - churches, manor houses, cottages, granaries, etc.