Lanckorona

Lanckorona is a village on a steep hill whose market square slopes noticeably and is lined with single-storey wooden houses of the nineteenth century, built after a fire, with wide overhanging eaves carried on brackets over the pavement - a local building form that survived here in a quantity found almost nowhere else in Poland. The whole layout is protected. Above the village in beech woods are the ruins of a fourteenth-century castle built under Kazimierz Wielki, now walls and a fragment of tower with a view over the Beskid foothills. The village became an artists' and weekenders' place from the 1970s and has a reputation for that - galleries, a couple of cafes, a slightly self-conscious quiet - and it is known locally as a spot associated with folk tales and, in the season, with mist sitting below it in the valleys. It is on the route between Krakow and Kalwaria and works as a half day.

What you actually see

• Wooden houses with deep eaves - nineteenth-century, in a rare surviving concentration.
• A sloping market square - the whole layout protected.
• Castle ruins above - fourteenth-century walls in beech woods, with a view.
• Galleries and cafes - the artists' colony that grew here from the 1970s.

When to go

April to October; autumn for the mist. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is a small village and can be seen in two hours. Weekends bring day-trippers from Krakow and the parking is limited. The castle is a modest ruin reached by a steep path. Several cafes open only at weekends outside summer.

Nearby

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska is six kilometres away; Wadowice beyond it.