Hiking in Krakow – 7 Top Spots Only Locals Know About

Get on the trails with this local’s guide to hiking in Krakow. It’s got woodland walks, mountain trails, and even national parks with amazing cave systems.

Most people come to Krakow for the history, the nightlife, and the café culture. We don’t think that’s much of a secret. But there are also places where you can go to escape the buzz of the Old Town and the crowds of Kazimierz.

Cue this guide to hiking in Krakow, which runs through a series of some of the best outdoors areas to hit the trails and get that hard-earned dose of nature within reach of the city center.

It’s got a nice mix of options, from full-on national parks that encompass caves and wild woods to easy-to-access parklands only a short bus ride from town.

Las Wolski, the Wolski Forest, is a large sweep of wooded hills that rise to the west of Krakow.

They actually sit just between the city and the airport, so you’re likely to travel through if you take the bus to the Old Town when you arrive.

We’d say this is one of the closest places for hiking in Krakow, since it’s only 10 minutes in the bus from the center. There are also loads of buses, because you take the same connection you’d take to get to Krakow Zoo, which actually sits inside the forest – as of 2025, you’re looking for bus line 134 and ride it right to the end.

Ignore the zoo when you get off the bus and push through into the woods.

There are a series of marked paths that run a circle through the woods. We especially like the one that skirts the southern side of Wolski, because they offer occasional views of the Vistula River.

It can be easy to get lost here, so be sure to mark where you’re going on the map. Las Wolski can be hiked any season, but it’s especially lovely when the trees start to change color in the autumn.

There are walks of 20 minutes or three hours on offer here.

Zakrzowek is one of the newest additions to the lineup of lovely parks in Krakow. It’s fast become our favorite summertime hangout spot because it kills two birds with one stone: A green getaway and a swimming location.

The whole thing was once an abandoned quarry on the south side of the city that no one was allowed to enter. Folks did, though, and they’d be perpetually chased by police and fined for hanging out on the precipitous cliffs.

Anyhow, the city administration has seen sense and developed Zakrzowek into a municipal parkland with really nice walking routes.

There’s a circular trail that loops the whole place, taking around an hour to complete in all. It’s totally wheelchair accessible and pram accessible and showcases little swamps and ponds and wetlands, often emerging onto lookouts over the flooded quarry below.

If you’re feeling it and the weather’s good, you can finish up with a swim in the decked pool spaces that are now open to the public here. It’s lush in the summer months.

Word of warning: DO NOT stray off the paths at Zakrzowek. People have fallen from the cliffs and they do drop away real sudden like. Oh yea, and there are adders about the place here, from one snake hater to any others.

There’s a flat, tarmacked route all the way along the Vistula River to the west of Krakow that links to the historic village of Tyniec.

It takes around 3-4 hours to hike but under an hour to cycle each way, so it’s just as popular on two wheels as two feet.

As you go, you’ll be treated to lovely views of the Las Wolski forest (see above) to the north and the river itself, which snakes and bends between green meadows.

More recently, there’s been quite a bit of construction on the parts of the path closer to town, so it’s not as nice as it once was, but only temporarily.

Still, the end point is the gorgeous Tyniec Abbey, which has a perch above farm fields and the riverway, not to mention its own on-site bar.

Feeling lazy? No worries – there are boat trips that take you all the way from the docks just below the main castle in downtown Krakow to Tyniec. It’s just as beautiful a ride and tours even include a guided tour of the abbey itself. In all, the boat and tour combo will take 4-5 hours.

It’s possible to see the great hump of Babia Gora peak to the south of the city on a clear day.

Officially, it’s a part of the Tatras, but it’s about halfway to the higher peaks of that range, which loom up above the ski town of Zakopane. So, that makes it A LOT easier to get to from downtown Krakow.

There are buses that go to the base of the trails here but they are rare and take a while. A hire car is your best bet to be honest, simply because you can leave the city early and drive right up to the parking for the trailhead. (A day’s rental from Krakow Airport shouldn’t cost too much and most hire companies are happy to arrange pickups from somewhere in the city center.)

Babia Gora might not look like the jagged Tatras further south, but it’s no walk in the park.

It clocks up over 1,700 meters in height and sits in the center of its own reserve, the Babia Gora National Park.

The route to the top is very exposed, on marked paths that are a mix of mud and loose stone.

The views are the great reward – you’ll be able to see the mighty Carpathian Mountains in one direction and look back at Krakow itself in the other.

Walking boots are a must. Don’t underestimate this mountain just because it’s not in the High Tatras!

We have separate guide to hiking Babia Gora for those interested in taking on the mountain.

The Ojcow National Park is the smallest national park in Poland. It covers a few plateaus and a single valley just to the north of Krakow, in a region known more generally as the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, or the Polish Jura.

It’s super easy to reach from the center of the city. By car, it takes just under 40 minutes and there’s loads of parking on site. There are also buses, which complete the trip in 50 minutes and cost peanuts – like £1.50 ($2) per person each way.

Once you get to Ojcow, there’s a whole web of hiking paths to get through. You can complete even the longest of them in a single day – this is the smallest national park in the country, remember?

They’re pretty darn amazing, too, showcasing soaring karst rock stacks that have strange names, deep caves, and thick woodlands of beech and oak.

We’ve got a complete guide to the whole Ojcow National Park right here, complete with in-depth info on the range of both easy and challenging hikes you can do there.

For us, there’s no question that the Tatra Mountains are the single best destination for hiking in Krakow.

Strictly speaking they aren’t in Krakow itself at all, but around the mountain town of Zakopane.

You can easily get there on a bus/train in just two hours and have all the trails open up before you, especially as connections start running nice and early. We’d book in advance using OMIO (see below) for that though, because tickets can sell out at peak times (it should be okay if you’re traveling autumn/spring)…

Anyway, back to the hiking. The Tatra National Park has a whopping 170 miles of trails across more than 100 marked routes.

We’ve actually got a complete guide to hiking in Zakopane that has more details on the unmissable bits but suffice to say here that there’s something for all levels, from casual strolls to epic summit pushes.

Our personal highlights and the ones we’d reccomend for first-time visitors would include:

• Morskie Oko – An incredible lake set high in the eastern Tatras that’s accessible on a very easy track that’s good for families. You can extend the walk to make it more challenging by adding on a detour through the…
• Valley of the Five Lakes – A whole platuaue in the middle of the mountains with spectacular lakes and pockets of woodlands. You can do a loop of this that last half a day.
• Kasprowy Wierch – Hike this 1,987-meter ridge from the main cable car base station in Kuznice (a small village that’s reachable from Zakopane’s main bus terminal in <15 minutes). You can ascend through one wooded valley and return through another.
• Rysy – The highest mountain in Poland is a serious climb. It’s probably not doable from Krakow because you need to start early and finish late. There are some scrambling sections.

If you do have some extra time then lovely Zakopane – the town at the base of the Tatra Mountains – is the perfect place to escape from Krakow. If you’re keen to do that, check out our guide to the top hotels in Zakopane, which can be LOVELY – think spa hotels with outdoor hot tubs and saunas that shouldn’t really break the bank too much!

The best time to hike here is between spring and summer. High snows in winter can up the avalanche risk and close the best routes.

You don’t HAVE to stick to Poland when it comes to hiking near Krakow. Nosir, there are now daytrips that can help you whisk you over the border with Slovakia to experience the Tatra Mountains on the south side of the national line.

Clue…They are jaw droppingly spectacular. Yup, the Slovak side of the peaks is wilder, less developed and generally more wooded and rugged.

The best daytrip option focuses on the incredible are around Bachledka, which is home to a small ski field in winter but one of northern Slovakia’s most unique attractions come the spring and summer months: A manmade canopy walking trail that offers breathtaking panoramas of the highlands.

It zigzags its way atop the pine forests on the western edge of the Pieniny mountains as the Tatras loom overhead across the valley. The hike itself is rated as easy as it’s all on boardwalk but there is a climb at the end as you hit the huge multi-level viewing platform.

It’s a full day trip from here to Krakow, involving a two-hour transfer each way and at least two hours of walking on the treetop trail.