Tykocin

Tykocin was a royal town and a substantial place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it has stayed small enough since that its baroque layout is legible: a long market square with the church of the Holy Trinity of the 1740s at one end, its twin towers linked by a curved gallery, and a statue of Stefan Czarniecki in the middle that is one of the oldest secular monuments in Poland. The synagogue of 1642 is the reason many people come - a large stone building with a central bimah under four pillars, wall inscriptions of prayers in painted cartouches, and its interior largely surviving, now a museum of the town's Jewish history, which before the war was most of the town's history. The castle on the Narew, a sixteenth-century royal fortress, was rebuilt from scratch by a private owner in the 2000s on the excavated foundations. The Narew marshes begin just downstream.

What you actually see

• The 1642 synagogue - stone, with a four-pillar bimah and painted prayer inscriptions.
• A baroque market square - the twin-towered church and the Czarniecki statue.
• A rebuilt royal castle - reconstructed privately in the 2000s on old foundations.
• The Narew nearby - the braided marsh valley starting downstream.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The synagogue museum closes on Mondays and has limited winter hours. The castle is a modern reconstruction, not surviving fabric, and is privately run. The town is small - half a day covers it.

Nearby

Narew National Park is downstream; Bialystok is east.