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Lublin: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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For four centuries Lublin was one of the great Jewish cities of Europe, home of rabbis, printers and the Council of Four Lands, the body that ran Jewish life in Poland and met at the Lublin fairs. On the eve of the war about a third of the city was Jewish. The Jewish town around the castle hill was razed, and today most of it is a car park, a road and a lawn. This walk starts at the gate between the two towns and ends at the yeshiva; about three hours, with a few gentle hills.

Lublin

A short history of Lublin

Lublin received town rights in 1317, and in 1569 the Union of Lublin was signed here, joining Poland and Lithuania into a single state. For centuries it was one of the most important Jewish centres in Europe: the Council of Four Lands met here, the 'Seer of Lublin' was active here, and in 1930 Rabbi Meir Shapiro's Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin opened here. Before the war Jews made up about a third of its residents. In 1941 the Germans set up the Majdanek camp on the outskirts of the city, and the entire community was murdered. Today Lublin is a university city of about 330,000 people.

The ten best sights in Lublin

  1. Grodzka Gate
    1
    Grodzka Gate

    The gate between the Christian and the Jewish towns; inside, the NN Theatre's exhibition on Jewish Lublin

  2. Lublin Castle
    2
    Lublin Castle

    The museum is in the castle; buy the ticket that includes the Holy Trinity Chapel

  3. Holy Trinity Chapel
    3
    Holy Trinity Chapel

    Entry in small timed groups to protect the frescoes; book or come early

  4. Kraków Gate
    4
    Kraków Gate

    The Gothic gate into the old town; the city history museum is inside

  5. Crown Tribunal
    5
    Crown Tribunal

    The old town hall in the middle of the Market Square; the cafés around it are the evening scene

  6. Lublin Cathedral
    6
    Lublin Cathedral

    Ask for the acoustic sacristy, where a whisper crosses the room

  7. Trinitarian Tower
    7
    Trinitarian Tower

    Climb it for the view over the old town to the castle

  8. Lublin Underground Route
    8
    Lublin Underground Route

    Guided walk through linked cellars under the square; good on a rainy day

  9. Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin
    9
    Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin

    The synagogue inside can be visited; ask at the hotel reception in the building

  10. Chevra Nosim Synagogue
    10
    Chevra Nosim Synagogue

    A small prayer house on Lubartowska Street; opening is limited, check before you go

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Tours in Lublin →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Lublin:

The Jerusalem of the Kingdom of Poland

Free walking tours in Lublin

The Jerusalem of the Kingdom of Poland

For four centuries Lublin was one of the great Jewish cities of Europe, home of rabbis, printers and the Council of Four Lands, the body that ran Jewish life in Poland and met at the Lublin fairs. On the eve of the war about a third of the city was Jewish. The Jewish town around the castle hill was razed, and today most of it is a car park, a road and a lawn. This walk starts at the gate between the two towns and ends at the yeshiva; about three hours, with a few gentle hills.

  1. Grodzka Gate · Lublin called it the Jewish Gate, because it led from the Christian old town down to the Jewish quarter. Since the 1990s it has housed the NN Theatre, whose exhibition rebuilds the vanished streets from photographs and the memories of survivors.
  2. Castle Meadow · The open ground at the foot of the castle was the heart of the Jewish town, with Szeroka Street and the Maharshal synagogue. The Germans demolished it in 1942 and 1943, and after the war the area was paved and grassed over.
  3. Chevra Nosim Synagogue · Chevra Nosim means the society of bearers — the burial society that carried the dead to the cemetery. Its members built this prayer house in 1899, and it is one of the very few Jewish houses of prayer in Lublin to come through the war.
  4. Old Jewish Cemetery · The oldest tombstone on the hill dates from 1541, and among those buried here is Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Horowitz, the Seer of Lublin, one of the founders of Polish Hasidism. Hasidim still come to pray at his ohel on the anniversary of his death.
  5. Cebularz Museum · The cebularz, a flat roll topped with onion and poppy seed, was baked by the Jewish bakers of Lublin, who called it pletzl. After the war Polish bakers kept making it, and in 2014 the EU registered it as a protected regional product.
  6. Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin · Rabbi Meir Shapiro, who in 1923 launched Daf Yomi — the daily page of Talmud studied by Jews around the world — opened this yeshiva in 1930 as the largest in the world. He died three years later, aged 46. The building was returned to the Jewish community in 2003, and its synagogue was reopened in 2007.

Royal Lublin

In 1569 the nobles of Poland and Lithuania met in Lublin and joined their two states into one Commonwealth, one of the largest countries in Europe. Kings stayed in the castle, and from 1578 the Crown Tribunal, the highest court of the land, sat on the Market Square. The old town that grew around them is small and hilly and mostly pedestrian. About two and a half hours; the chapel needs a timed ticket.

  1. Kraków Gate · The gate was built in the 14th century, after the Tatar raids, as part of the walls that King Casimir the Great gave the town. It is the symbol of Lublin, and the city history museum fills its floors.
  2. Trinitarian Tower · The neo-Gothic tower was put up in 1819 as the gateway and belfry of the cathedral. Its viewing terrace is the highest point in the old town, with the castle and the empty ground of the Jewish town laid out below.
  3. Lublin Cathedral · The Jesuits built it around 1600 as their church; it became a cathedral only in the 19th century. In the sacristy the vault carries sound so well that a whisper in one corner is heard clearly in the opposite one — it is said confessions had to be moved.
  4. Crown Tribunal · King Stefan Batory made Lublin the seat of the Crown Tribunal in 1578, the court of appeal for nobles from all over Lesser Poland. For two centuries litigants filled the town, and its inns and merchants grew rich on them.
  5. Lublin Underground Route · Merchants dug deep cellars under their houses to store goods, and many were linked over the centuries. The route joins them into one passage under the square, with the stories of the town's fires and floods along the way.
  6. Holy Trinity Chapel · The chapel is Gothic, but in 1418 King Władysław Jagiełło had it painted from floor to vault by Ruthenian artists in the Byzantine style — a Catholic church with Orthodox frescoes. The paintings were plastered over and forgotten, and uncovered only at the end of the 19th century.

Majdanek and the memory of the war

Lublin was the headquarters of Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder the Jews of occupied Poland, and the city itself became one of its first victims. Majdanek, on the edge of town, was never hidden: its barracks stand in full view of the houses around it. This route goes from the Gestapo building in the centre to the deportation point and then out to the camp. Allow most of a day and do not rush it; there is a café near the Majdanek visitor centre.

  1. Under the Clock Museum · The building is named after the clock on its corner. From 1939 the Gestapo used it as its Lublin headquarters, and prisoners scratched their names and messages into the walls of the basement cells, where they can still be read.
  2. Umschlagplatz Memorial · On the night of 16 to 17 March 1942 the deportation of the Lublin ghetto began here, the first action of Operation Reinhard. In about a month some 30,000 people were loaded onto trains to the Bełżec death camp.
  3. Monument to Struggle and Martyrdom · Wiktor Tołkin's huge gate-shaped monument was unveiled in 1969 at the entrance to the camp. Visitors pass it on the way in, and from it a long path leads across the camp to the mausoleum.
  4. Baths and Gas Chambers · Majdanek was captured by the Red Army in July 1944, so quickly that the Germans could not destroy it, and it was the first camp the world saw with its gas chambers still standing. Blue stains from the Zyklon B gas are still visible on the walls.
  5. Shoes of the Aktion Reinhardt Victims · The camp's warehouses sorted the belongings of Jews murdered in Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. Thousands of their shoes fill the wire cages of this barrack.
  6. Majdanek Mausoleum · On 3 November 1943, in an operation the Germans called Harvest Festival, about 18,000 Jews were shot in trenches beside this spot in a single day, while music played from loudspeakers. The domed mausoleum shelters a mound of human ashes collected in the camp.
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Getting to Lublin and getting around

  • Lublin Airport · In Świdnik, about 20 minutes east of the centre; a train runs from the terminal to the main station
  • Lublin Główny Station · The main station, south of the centre; a bus or taxi up to the old town
  • Dworzec Lublin (bus station) · The new bus station next to the railway station; coaches and minibuses across the region

Cheap eats in Lublin

Lublin's own snack is the cebularz, a flat roll covered in onion and poppy seed that the city's Jewish bakers made and Polish bakeries still sell everywhere. Around the old town you also find pierogi, soup bars and, oddly, a lot of Georgian food — khinkali included. It is a student city, so lunch is cheap by Israeli standards.

  • Kuźmiuk Bakery · A cebularz by the Grodzka Gate, about 4-6 zł
  • Ambaras · Soup bar in the old town, a bowl about 15-22 zł
  • Chinkalnia · Georgian khinkali by the piece, a plate about 30-40 zł
  • Garmażerka Polskie Smaki · Pierogi and home-style dishes by weight, about 25-35 zł
  • Dobra Pączkarnia · Polish doughnuts on Krakowskie Przedmieście, about 5-8 zł each
  • Pijalnia Czekolady E. Wedel · Hot chocolate from the Warsaw chocolate maker, about 15-25 zł

Museums in Lublin

  • Lublin Castle Museum · Paintings, arms and the castle's history as a prison
  • Holy Trinity Chapel · Byzantine frescoes of 1418 in a Gothic chapel
  • Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre · The exhibition on Jewish Lublin; free entry, check the hours
  • Under the Clock Museum · Gestapo cells with prisoners' inscriptions
  • Pharmacy Museum · An old chemist's shop on the square; small and quick
  • Kozłówka Palace · Aristocratic rooms upstairs, Socialist Realism in the stables

Things to do in Lublin with kids

  • Lublin Underground Route · Cellars, lanterns and a guide; about 45 minutes
  • Open-Air Village Museum · Farmyards, a windmill and space to run
  • Trinitarian Tower · Stairs to the top and the whole town below
  • House of Legends · Lublin's legends told with puppets and models
  • Cebularz Museum · Children shape and bake their own onion roll

Holy places in Lublin

  • Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin · The restored study hall and synagogue; modest dress
  • Old Jewish Cemetery · The Seer of Lublin's ohel; visits by arrangement
  • Chevra Nosim Synagogue · The burial society's prayer house of 1899
  • Majdanek State Museum · Barracks, gas chambers and the mausoleum; not for young children
  • Holy Trinity Chapel · Where Latin and Orthodox Christianity meet on one wall
  • Lublin Cathedral · Painted illusionist vaults and the whispering sacristy

Where to eat in Lublin

  • Mandragora · Jewish-style cooking on the Market Square; not kosher
  • Sielsko Anielsko · Polish and regional dishes in the old town
  • Perliczka · Polish kitchen just off the square
  • Bałagan · Regional food in the old town
  • Od Kuchni Stare Miasto · Regional cooking near the Grodzka Gate
  • Armenia · Armenian and Caucasian grill on the square
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Frequently asked questions about Lublin

What is there to see in Lublin?

The top sights in Lublin are Grodzka Gate, Lublin Castle and Holy Trinity Chapel. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Lublin?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Lublin without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Lublin?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Lublin, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Jerusalem of the Kingdom of Poland.

How do you get to Lublin and get around?

The main ways are Lublin Airport, Lublin Główny Station and Dworzec Lublin (bus station). Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Lublin, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Lublin that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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