Wrocław, Lower Silesia

Day 1

• Rynek and Gothic Town Hall

  It is one of the largest medieval market squares in Europe, and the particular thing is that at its centre there is not an empty space but a whole block: the Gothic town hall plus other buildings, with lanes between them. What you see is rebuilt (over half of Wrocław was destroyed in the 1945 siege) and the coloured facades were redone from period drawings. The square is alive at every hour because it is residential, not only touristic.

• Gnome hunt (krasnale)

  The bronze dwarfs number over a thousand and keep multiplying: they are not a tourist scheme but the descendants of Orange Alternative, the movement that in the 1980s painted dwarfs on walls to mock communist censorship. They stand about twenty centimetres high at pavement level, so you only find them by looking down. Maps are sold at the kiosks; the app is free.

Day 2

• Hala Targowa and Silesian cuisine

  The Hala Targowa is an early 20th-century covered market with reinforced concrete arches, and it still works as a neighbourhood market: fruit, meat, flowers, and stalls that shut in the early afternoon. Kluski śląskie are flattened potato dumplings with a dimple in the middle, there to hold the sauce; żurek is the sour rye soup, served with sausage and egg. They are lunch dishes and in the trattorias they cost a fraction of eating on the Rynek.

• Pierogi and bar mleczny

  Pierogi are ordered by the portion of eight or ten and shared, and the real difference is between the boiled ones and those then fried in the pan: the second cost the same and are far better. The bar mleczny are the people's canteens that survived communism and are still subsidised: handwritten menu in Polish only, pay at the till before eating, wait for your number and clear your own table. A full meal costs a few złoty and is the cheapest way to eat in Poland.

Day 1

• Ostrów Tumski (Cathedral Island)✦ hidden gem

  It is the island where Wrocław began, and it has something that has almost vanished from Europe: gas lamps, lit and put out by hand every evening by a lamplighter in a cloak and top hat, who passes at sunset. It is not a re-enactment for tourists, it is how the lighting there works. You have to arrive at the right moment, which shifts daily with the sunset: in December the lamplighter comes round shortly after 16:00, in late June towards 21:00, and anyone half an hour late finds the lamps already burning and nobody in the street.

• Hala Stulecia (Centennial Hall)✦ hidden gem

  It is a reinforced-concrete dome of 1913, a UNESCO site, and the piece of architecture that explains why Wrocław matters: when it was built it had the widest concrete span in the world. It is outside the old town, 20 minutes by tram, and a single ticket costs 3 złoty on normal lines and 3.20 on express ones, a little under 1 €. Around it is the park with the multimedia fountain, which puts on shows at set times in summer. It is an afternoon place, not a morning one, and there are generally far fewer people than on the Rynek.

• Panorama Racławicka✦ hidden gem

  It is a circular painting 114 metres long, viewed from inside the scene, in a rotunda built for it. The ticket costs 50 złoty full and 35 reduced, about 12 €, the session lasts 30 minutes and one starts every half hour, with a maximum of 85 people per slot: booking a date and time is compulsory for everyone and sales open 7 days ahead, so turning up without one does not work. From 1 April to 31 October it opens daily 08:30-19:00; from 1 November to 31 March it closes on Monday and runs 09:30-16:00, with Saturday until 17:00. The thing almost nobody knows: the same ticket also gets you free into the National Museum, the Ethnographic Museum and the Four Domes Pavilion, within three months.

Day 2

• University and the Leopoldina Hall✦ hidden gem

  The Aula Leopoldina is the university's baroque hall, and it is not a church: it is the great hall where students graduate, stuccoed, frescoed and statued from floor to ceiling. It is visited on the university museum ticket, which also covers the Oratorium Marianum and the mathematical tower, from which you look down on the centre. The closing day is Wednesday, not Monday, and that is the trap: on other days it opens 10:00-16:00, with tickets sold until half an hour before. It is a couple of minutes from the Rynek and stays half empty while the square is full.

• Hydropolis✦ hidden gem

  It is a science centre devoted entirely to water, built inside a disused 19th-century underground reservoir: the spaces are the original ones, with their brick vaults. A full ticket costs 45 złoty and a reduced one 36, about 10 €, with a family option at 130 złoty for two adults and up to two children. The installations are immersive and largely interactive, so it works very well with children. It is the right indoor attraction for a rainy day, which Wrocław often has, and it sits outside the old-town circuit: about twenty minutes by tram.

Day 1

• Hala Targowa and Silesian cuisine

  The Hala Targowa is an early 20th-century covered market with reinforced concrete arches, and it still works as a neighbourhood market: fruit, meat, flowers, and stalls that shut in the early afternoon. Kluski śląskie are flattened potato dumplings with a dimple in the middle, there to hold the sauce; żurek is the sour rye soup, served with sausage and egg. They are lunch dishes and in the trattorias they cost a fraction of eating on the Rynek.

• Pierogi and bar mleczny

  Pierogi are ordered by the portion of eight or ten and shared, and the real difference is between the boiled ones and those then fried in the pan: the second cost the same and are far better. The bar mleczny are the people's canteens that survived communism and are still subsidised: handwritten menu in Polish only, pay at the till before eating, wait for your number and clear your own table. A full meal costs a few złoty and is the cheapest way to eat in Poland.

• Craft beer and the Rynek breweries✦ hidden gem

  Poland has one of the liveliest beer scenes in Europe and in Wrocław there are breweries with their vessels on show looking straight onto the Rynek. The vocabulary you need: piwo jasne is the pale one, ciemne the dark, niefiltrowane the unfiltered, and most pubs serve in three sizes. Prices stay well below the European average even in the places on the square, which is usually where the opposite happens.