Looking ahead to 2021, here’s a list of Top 10 places to visit after pandemic has gone
Were it open, a snoop inside the Regional Museum opposite would be enough to learn the importance the town attaches to its favourite son, General Józef Bem. A patriotic military hero that fought for both Napoleon and Polish independence, his status is such that relics like a wisp of his hair and a fragment of his finger bone (once stolen in the 1920s but later returned by the thief) are awarded almost reverential importance.
Saving these curiosities for a time not falling within the brackets of a pandemic, instead seek outdoor pleasures. These, Tarnów has in abundance, not least contained inside the Old Town’s tight tangle of streets; narrow passages, dipping stairwells, shaded courtyards and leaning defensive walls act as one to paint a vivid picture of the past: on nights thick with fog, one half expects lantern-wielding body snatchers to loom from out of the mists.
Completed in 1910 in spectacular Austro-Hungarian Secessionist style, Tarnów’s station seduces with the kind of unrestrained majesty that reminds of the halcyon days of the Orient Express.
Once an 18th century tavern, the Ethnographic Museum houses Europe’s most important exhibition related to Roma culture, while other attractions present themselves via a voluminous cathedral piled high with historic tombs and glimmering stained glass details.
The Old Town’s narrow passages, dipping stairwells, shaded courtyards and leaning defensive walls paint a vivid picture of the past, but nothing outranks the Rynek in terms of X-factor.
Ringed by arcaded townhouses, these stare onto the square’s centrepiece, a Renaissance town hall crowned with 14 grotesque stone faces and a hand-cranked clock.