Explore Lublin

Grodzka Gate is a city gate first built in 1342 and given its present form in 1785 by the royal architect Dominik Merlini. Also called the Jewish Gate, it led from the Christian Old Town to the Jewish quarter of Lublin. It houses the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre, a cultural institution that documents the city's Polish-Jewish past.

Kraków Gate is a Gothic gate tower of Lublin's town walls, built after the Tatar raid of 1341 under King Casimir III the Great. Further storeys were added up to the 18th century, including an octagonal top with a Baroque cupola from 1782. Since 1979 it has housed the Museum of the History of the City of Lublin.

Lublin Castle stands on a hill beside the Old Town, fortified since the 12th century. Its 13th-century stone keep is the oldest building in the city, and the Chapel of the Holy Trinity holds Ruthenian-Byzantine frescoes completed in 1418. The Gothic Revival main building dates from the 19th century and houses the National Museum in Lublin.

Lublin Cathedral is a former Jesuit church begun in 1586 and modelled on the Gesù in Rome, one of the first Baroque churches in Poland. After a fire in 1752 Józef Meyer covered the interior with illusionistic frescoes. It became a cathedral in 1832 and has a classicist portico; guided visits include the acoustic sacristy and the crypts.

The State Museum at Majdanek was founded in 1944 on the grounds of the German Nazi concentration camp KL Lublin, which operated from 1941 to 1944. By the museum's research about 80,000 of some 130,000 people deported there died, about 60,000 of them Jews. Visitors see barracks, gas chambers, the crematorium and the Mausoleum.