Zakopane and the Polish Tatras

Look south from Zakopane and you will see, on the skyline above the town, a long grey ridge with a profile like a man lying on his back. That is Giewont, and for generations the people of the town have seen in it a sleeping knight. The legend says he will wake and ride out when the nation is in its greatest need. Until then he lies there, keeping an eye on the town, and on the walkers going up past him into the Tatras.

The stories differ on who exactly is asleep. In some versions it is a single knight; in others a whole army of enchanted soldiers waits in caves beneath the mountain, and in one the sleeper is King Bolesław I himself, with his knights around him. The mountain's three summits, which rise to about 1,895 metres, are usually read as the knight's body and face. Once you have been told, it is hard to see anything else.

The mountains

The Tatras run along the border between Poland and Slovakia. On the Polish side they are protected as the Tatra National Park, which is often described as the most visited national park in the country, and with good reason: they are a proper high mountain range, with rocky peaks, deep valleys and lakes. The park is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, which says something about how much of its wild country has survived the crowds.

The highest Polish summit is Rysy, at about 2,500 metres. The best-known lake is Morskie Oko, the largest lake in the Tatras, lying beneath the peaks. Its fame is such that the path to it can be busy, and it is worth starting early.

For those who would rather not walk up, there is the cable car to Kasprowy Wierch. It opened in March 1936, after a remarkably quick construction that began in the summer of 1935 and took a little over two hundred days, and it was hugely controversial at the time, the subject of a long public argument over whether such a thing should be allowed in the mountains at all. That argument fed into the movement for a Tatra national park. The cable car won, and it is credited with launching Zakopane as a centre of winter sport.

The Zakopane style

Towards the end of the nineteenth century Zakopane gave its name to a style of building. Its creator was Stanisław Witkiewicz, and the Zakopane style he devised took the wooden building of the region as its starting point. The first house built in the style, the Villa Koliba, went up in 1892 and 1893. Walk around the town and you will see the style everywhere, in villas, chapels and guesthouses, and it gives Zakopane a character quite unlike any other Polish town.

Down the Dunajec

East of Zakopane, the Dunajec river cuts a gorge between the limestone cliffs of the Pieniny mountains. The traditional way down it is on wooden rafts, which run from Sromowce to Szczawnica. Rafting on the Dunajec goes back at least to the sixteenth century, and the trip is gentle and slow, with the cliffs rising on either side.

Holidays in the Tatras

Explore Worldwide's seven-night Hiking in the Polish Carpathians is the one in the catalogue that lists Zakopane. Its places include Kraków, Babia Gora National Park and Zawoja, Zverovka, Zakopane, the Dunajec Gorge, Szczawnica and Kroscienko. It has departures in every month from May to September.

Two other Explore Worldwide holidays reach the Tatras without stopping in Zakopane. The fourteen-night Highlights of Eastern Europe includes Krakow and the Pieniny National Park, Spis Castle and Tatranska Lomnica, then Banska Bystrica, Vlkolinec, Banska Stiavnica and Stará Hora, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and Mikulov. It has departures in every month from May to October.

The seven-night Krakow to Budapest Adventure goes from Krakow over to the Slovak side of the mountains, with Lesnica, Spisske, Tatranska Lomnica, Starý Smokovec and Hrebienok, and then on to Kosice, Tokaj, Tard and Budapest. It has departures in every month from May to October.

However you come, look up at Giewont when you arrive, and again when you leave. The knight, so far, is still asleep.