Warsaw in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Warsaw covers 13 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Warsaw rewards a detour.

The Warsaw route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 7 stops over about 2.7 km as the crow flies, from Royal Route: Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Świat to Old Town Market Square. ≈ 2.7 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Royal Route: Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Świat: The grand ceremonial avenue running south from Castle Square, lined with palaces, churches and cafés, including the church that holds Chopin's heart and the gate of Warsaw's university. 0.9 km to the next stop
2. Copernicus Science Centre: A large hands-on science centre on the Vistula embankment, with hundreds of interactive exhibits, a planetarium under an amber dome, a roof garden and a swinging Foucault pendulum, named after the great Polish astronomer. 0.5 km to the next stop
3. Vistula Boulevards: Warsaw's revived riverfront promenade on the left bank of the Vistula, with walkways, barge cafés and the riverside Mermaid statue, looking across the water to a wild, near-natural opposite shore. 1.1 km to the next stop
4. Royal Castle: The former residence of Poland's kings and seat of its parliament at the gate of the Old Town, blown up by German forces in the war and rebuilt from voluntary donations in the 1970s and 1980s. 0 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Castle Square and Sigismund's Column: The grand triangular square before the Royal Castle, where the king's road begins, dominated by the slender column of King Sigismund III, the first secular monument of its kind and the oldest in Warsaw. 0.2 km to the next stop
2. St. John's Archcathedral: The brick-Gothic mother church of Warsaw, where kings were crowned and buried, destroyed almost completely in 1944 and rebuilt in a plain medieval form, with a national pantheon in its crypts. 0 km to the next stop
3. Old Town Market Square: The colourful heart of Warsaw's Old Town, ringed by tall merchant houses with the bronze Mermaid at its centre, and famous because the whole square was rebuilt from rubble after the war.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 6 stops over about 14 km as the crow flies, from Barbican to Wilanów Palace. ≈ 14 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Barbican: A round, red-brick fortified gate on the old city walls between the Old Town and New Town, built in the mid-sixteenth century, long ruined, and rebuilt after the war as one of Warsaw's best-loved landmarks. 1.1 km to the next stop
2. POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews: A museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, facing the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, that tells a thousand years of Polish-Jewish life, in a striking modern building with an undulating entrance hall. 2 km to the next stop
3. Warsaw Uprising Museum: The museum of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, set in a former tram power station, recalling the sixty-three-day fight and the destruction of the city through its exhibits, monument wall and the names of the fallen. 1.7 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Palace of Culture and Science: The towering Stalinist skyscraper at the centre of Warsaw, a Soviet 'gift' of 1955 long the tallest building in Poland, still a divisive landmark, with a famous viewing terrace on the thirtieth floor. 2.7 km to the next stop
2. Łazienki Royal Park: The largest park in Warsaw, the last king's romantic garden of palaces and lakes, with the Palace on the Isle, an outdoor Chopin monument that hosts free Sunday concerts, and resident peacocks. 6.8 km to the next stop
3. Wilanów Palace: The baroque summer palace of King Jan III Sobieski, the victor of Vienna, often called the Polish Versailles; one of the few great Warsaw buildings to survive the war, set in formal gardens.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: October 10, 2026

Full Warsaw guide and all stops →