Experience the best of Lublin

Lublin stands on a hill above the Bystrzyca river in eastern Poland, and its old town is a tangle of narrow lanes, merchants' houses and church towers around a central market square. The Kraków Gate, a medieval city gate, opens the way into the old town. Lublin Castle holds a chapel with Byzantine-style frescoes painted in the early fifteenth century. In 1569 the Union of Lublin joined Poland and Lithuania into one state.

A former German concentration camp, Majdanek, lies on the south-eastern edge of the city and is now a memorial museum. The Open-Air Museum shows rural buildings from across the region. Kazimierz Dolny, an old Vistula river town loved by painters, lies about forty kilometres to the west, and the planned Renaissance town of Zamość, a UNESCO site, is to the south-east.

The onion flatbread called cebularz is the city's own food, eaten fresh from a bakery, and the region cooks with buckwheat, dumplings and wild mushrooms. Students keep the cafés and bars busy in term time. The old town is lit up in the evenings, and its lanes are at their best when the weather is mild.