Wrocław — a city of bridges, the Market Square and the dwarfs.

Wrocław lies on the Oder and its arms, on more than a dozen islands linked by bridges and footbridges — hence its bynames of "the Polish Venice" and the city of bridges. It has more than a thousand years of history, and passed through Bohemian, Austrian (Habsburg) and Prussian rule; after 1945 it was rebuilt and largely resettled by people from Poland's former eastern lands. That layering is visible in the architecture of the whole city.

The centre is the vast Market Square — one of the largest medieval squares in Poland — with its monumental Gothic town hall and colourful townhouses. Just beside it lies plac Solny, and nearby are the Racławice Panorama and the University of Wrocław with its Baroque Leopoldina Hall.

The oldest part of the city is Ostrów Tumski — the cathedral island with its Gothic archcathedral and churches, at its most atmospheric at dusk, when the lamplighter still lights the gas lamps. On the other side of the city stands the Centennial Hall — a reinforced-concrete modernist building of 1913, added to the UNESCO list in 2006.

Wrocław's calling card is its dwarfs — several hundred small bronze figures scattered along the pavements across the city. They grew out of the happenings of the Orange Alternative in the 1980s, and since 2005 have expanded into a tourist phenomenon and a city-wide game for the whole family.

Getting there: about 3.5–4 hours by train from Warsaw, about 2.5–3 hours by the A4 motorway from Kraków. Wrocław-Strachowice airport is about 10–12 km from the centre (with a city bus into town). Trams and buses run by MPK serve the city.