Poland

Stretching from the Baltic Sea coast to the wild jags of the Carpathians, Poland has suffered repeatedly throughout history at the hands of outside forces, yet burns as bright as any nation on Earth. From the famed Iron Age settlement of Biskupin to a night on the town in the “Phoenix City” of Warsaw, see firsthand a European culture at once old and new—and the careful, considerate, and painful process by which even the most wretched sort of history may be drawn upon to shape a national identity.

Back in the Renaissance, Poland was one of Europe’s great empires, flourishing for several centuries as its own huge dynasty and then as part of the unified Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It ultimately fell apart, and Polish territory was claimed by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The 20th century brought horrible loss of life, displacement, and cultural persecution to the Polish people, what with the awful tolls of both World Wars and the long decades of Soviet Communism.

Today, however, Poland is a vital and vibrant member of the European Union. Even given all of the infrastructural devastation of World War II—Warsaw was almost fully destroyed—there is an unbelievable richness of historical and cultural sites. And Krakow—from the Royal Castle and St. Mary’s Basilica to the Florian Gate and the Juliusz Slowacki Theatre—is certainly one of Europe’s most gorgeous cities.

The Polish countryside feels remarkably unblemished. In the northeast, the Masurian Lakes—product of Pleistocene ice sheets—are a paradise for canoeists and kayakers. On the border with Belarus, the Bialowieza Forest showcases one of the rarest landscapes in Europe: a large tract of old-growth forest. The primeval hardwoods of the Bialowieza are probably best-known as the haunt of wisents, or European bison—which here find one of their greatest strongholds—but hikers can also seek out wolf tracks and monumental, centuries-old oaks. Poland also includes some of the highest summits in the entire Carpathian range with its share of the Tatra Mountains, which exceed 8,000 feet; Tatra National Park gives you a full dose of their craggy glories.

In Poland, come face to face with the many contours of Central European history, and how they fit within a yet-older framework of wild Nature. You can party it up on the seacoast or the streets of Warsaw, no question; but your visit, performed with enough clear-eyed attention, is likely to prompt some deep meditations on time and the human spirit—not least at the many monuments and memorials to the many lives destroyed or irrevocably changed by World War II and the Holocaust. And that's a precious thing.