Zakopane

Urban commune

Postal code: 34-500 Dialling code: +48 (0)18 Area: 84 km² Population: 29.419

Zakopane Poland's winter capital is situated at the foot of the Tatras, along the Slovak border.
Although it may look insignificant on a map, this is the most awesome, inspiring landscape in all of Poland. Steep peaks towering 6.000 feet into the clouds, gushing waterfalls, snow-covered hills, completely placid lakes, and a wild animal population that includes bears, lynxes and soaring golden eagles, make up the amazing Tatra Mountains.

The appealing small mountain town of Zakopane has been a frequented resort area since the end of the 19th century, when a physician from Warsaw Tytus Chalubinski declared that the healthy Tatra Mountains air could cure tuberculosis, among the other ailments. Today it is one of Poland's most-visited tourist spots with some two million visitors a year, in a town of just 30.000 inhabitants. As a result, Zakopane has become a fairly cosmopolitan. Nevertheless the old town has not quite vanished, and you will still find plenty of traditional mountain chalets with their gables and steeply sloping roofs. It is probably tourism that is keeping folk traditions and costumes alive here, but it means that you enjoy splendid sleigh rides and bonfire evenings where highlanders in white woollen trousers perform the dramatic Zbójnicki Robbers Dance.

Not far beyond the Tatras lie the picturesque Pieniny, a small range of linestone mountains, sliced through the magnificient Dunajec river gorge. The real experience is a breath-taking raft ride down the river Dunajec in the nearby Pieniny National Park. The two hour ride passes through beautiful, sometimes rugged, territory beneath steep rocks as high as 1.300 feet above the river.

After raft trip you cannot miss the beautiful spa of Szczawnica with it's healthy spring mineral water.

National Park

Tatra

The park surrounds and protects the whole Tatra Range on the Polish side, the only region of alpine character in Poland, with the highest peak of Mount Rysy (2499 m above sea level). ...