Krakow Sightseeing: Two Tickets, One Hill
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Two planning facts decide whether a Kraków sightseeing day works. Wawel Hill sells two entirely separate tickets, castle and cathedral, from two operators at two windows. St Mary’s does the same thing, basilica and tower, on two different schedules. Get those four purchases in the right order and everything else in the Old Town is a fifteen-minute walk from everything else.
Wawel is one hill, two tickets and two queues
The Royal Castle is a state museum with timed entry, open Tuesday to Sunday 9:30 to 17:00 and closed Mondays apart from a few free-entry exhibitions whose tickets are handed out in person, capped at five a head and usually gone by 10:00. The exhibitions are sold by floor now: 57 / 43 PLN for the first floor, the same for the second, 95 / 71 for both together. Slots release about a month ahead, the combined route sells out first, and summer walk-ups frequently find nothing left by late morning. Book at bilety.wawel.krakow.pl .
The Cathedral is run by the Cathedral Chapter from its own window opposite the door, with no reliable online booking, at 26 / 18 PLN. That covers the nave, the Royal Tombs and crypts, the Cathedral Museum and the climb to the 1520 Sigismund Bell. The crypts hold kings such as Kazimierz the Great and Władysław Jagiełło alongside Piłsudski, Kościuszko, Mickiewicz and Słowacki, so it reads as a national pantheon rather than a royal one. Shoulders and knees covered.
The grounds and courtyard are free from about 6:00 to dusk, and the Dragon’s Den below at 15 / 10 PLN closes for the winter around 31 October. If you want the hill narrated as you climb it, compare Wawel tours on GetYourGuide and check what admission the price includes.
St Mary’s Basilica sells the tower separately
Basilica interior: 20 / 10 PLN, Monday to Saturday 11:30 to 18:00, Sunday and holidays 14:00 to 18:00, entered from the south side, tickets at Plac Mariacki 7. The Veit Stoss altarpiece opens from 11:50 on weekdays and 14:10 on Sundays, so arriving at 11:00 means seeing it shut.
The tower is 20 / 15 PLN, closed Mondays, running Tuesday to Saturday 11:00 to 17:30 with departures every 25 minutes from 11:05, fifteen people a group, two groups an hour, and no children under 7. It sells on the day only at Plac Mariacki 7 with no advance booking anywhere, which makes it the one Kraków ticket you cannot plan around. Current hours on mariacki.com .
What is closed on the day you turn up?
Kraków’s two museum institutions run different closing days and different free days, which catches people out more than prices do.
| Sight | Closed | Free entry |
|---|---|---|
| Wawel Royal Castle | Mondays | limited Monday exhibitions, in person only |
| Wawel Cathedral | Sunday mornings are Mass only | none |
| St Mary’s tower | Mondays | none |
| Cloth Hall gallery | Mondays | Tuesdays |
| Czartoryski Museum | Mondays | Tuesdays, timed and limited |
| Rynek Underground | second Monday of the month | Tuesdays |
| Town Hall Tower | none | Mondays |
| Schindler’s Factory | first Tuesday of the month | Mondays |
| MOCAK | Mondays | Thursdays, level minus one only |
Free entry covers permanent exhibitions only and runs shorter hours, and at Schindler’s Factory and the Rynek Underground nothing at all can be booked online on the free day: box office, five a head, while they last.
Rynek Glowny, and the museum underneath it
The square was staked out in 1257 under Kraków’s Magdeburg charter, runs roughly 200 metres a side across about 40,000 square metres, and has barely changed footprint since. Walking it is free. The Cloth Hall’s ground-floor arcade is a working amber and leather market and also free; the gallery of 19th-century Polish art upstairs is 35 / 25 PLN, or 1 PLN for anyone aged 7 to 26.
Under the paving, the Rynek Underground is an archaeological museum of 13th and 14th-century market stalls with glass floors over the original cobbles, at 45 / 35 PLN, and it is the sight in Kraków most likely to sell out on the day.
Kazimierz is the Jewish quarter and Podgorze is where the Ghetto was
Kazimierz, founded as its own city in 1335, was the centre of Jewish Kraków for roughly five hundred years, with over 60,000 residents by 1939. In March 1941 the Nazis forced that population out of Kazimierz and across the Vistula into Podgórze, sealing it as the Kraków Ghetto until it was liquidated on 13 and 14 March 1943.
So the sites divide by riverbank. In Kazimierz: the Old Synagogue, the 15th-century building that is Poland’s oldest surviving Jewish temple and now a Museum of Kraków branch at 22 / 16 PLN; the Remuh Synagogue of 1553, the only one here with regular services, with a combined synagogue and cemetery ticket at 10 / 5 PLN; and the Galicia Jewish Museum on ul. Dajwór at 35 / 25 PLN, daily 10:00 to 18:00.
Across the Bernatek footbridge in Podgórze: Ghetto Heroes Square with its seventy oversized empty bronze chairs, free and open; the Eagle Pharmacy at plac Bohaterów Getta 18, where Tadeusz Pankiewicz was the only non-Jewish resident allowed to keep a business inside the sealed ghetto, at 22 / 16 PLN and free on Wednesdays; and Schindler’s Factory at ul. Lipowa 4 in Zabłocie, whose permanent exhibition is “Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939 to 1945”. That one is 60 / 45 PLN, timed entry, and every visitor must bring original photo identification.
Auschwitz-Birkenau is a separate day
Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940 to 1945) stands about 65 to 70 km west of the city, roughly two hours each way in practice once the shuttle between the two sites is counted, and it should be the only thing on that day.
Entry is booked online only at visit.auschwitz.org . On-site sales ended on 1 March 2026. Admission to the grounds is free and what is paid for is a guide-educator, at 150 PLN or 140 reduced for the 3.5 hour tour, with Polish-language departures 10 to 20 PLN cheaper. Entering without a guide is possible only after a monthly cutoff that runs from 13:00 in December to 17:00 between April and September, a free pass has to be reserved no later than seven days ahead, and one reservation covers at most ten people. Visitor regulations changed on 1 July 2026, so read the Memorial’s own current rules.
The hardest walk-up ticket in the city
The Czartoryski Museum on ul. Pijarska 15, at 65 / 50 PLN, holds Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine from around 1489 to 1491, one of about fifteen surviving Leonardo panel paintings, plus Rembrandt’s Landscape with the Good Samaritan. Its free Tuesday slots are timed and limited and go early. Book it before you book anything else on a Tuesday.
Sequence the hill first thing: castle ticket, then cathedral while you are already up there, then downhill to the Dragon’s Den and out along the river. The walking routes between districts and the ticketed attractions further out both start from the same square. For a room inside that radius, check Kraków rates on Booking.com .