Wrocław, Poland

The City of Dwarves — 400 bronze figurines and medieval pierogi

Wrocław is Poland's most beautiful city — a medieval market square ringed by pastel Gothic and Baroque townhouses, bisected by the Oder River across twelve islands, and hiding 400+ bronze dwarf figurines tucked into corners across the old town. Historically German Breslau, it became Polish after World War II when its German population was expelled and replaced by Poles from Lwów. That layered identity — Silesian, German, Habsburg, Jewish — makes its food culture unlike anywhere else in Poland: proper żurek (soured rye soup), Silesian kopytka dumplings, and the oldest restaurant in Poland (Piw…

Founded as a Bohemian city in the 10th century, Wrocław became capital of the Silesian Piast duchy, then passed to the Habsburgs in 1526 and to Prussian Breslau in 1741 under Frederick the Great. After 1945 the German population was expelled west under the Potsdam Agreement; a new Polish population — many expelled from Lwów — rebuilt the nearly totally destroyed city from rubble and old photographs. Wrocław became a European Capital of Culture in 2016.