Poland

Poland is a country in Europe.

Most of it is flat land. It has many lakes and big forests. The sea is in the north. Mountains are in the south. The capital city is called Warsaw.

Poland is in central Europe, roughly round in shape. The Baltic Sea is to the north, and mountains line its southern border. In between, most of Poland is low, flat land, part of the great North European Plain that stretches across northern Europe.

About 37 million people live in Poland. Its capital, Warsaw, stands on the Vistula, Poland's largest river. Warsaw's old town was rebuilt so carefully after it was destroyed in 1944 that it is now a World Heritage Site.

Poland lies at the physical center of Europe, between about 49° and 55° N and 14° and 24° E. Irregularly circular, it consists almost entirely of lowlands within the North European Plain apart from its southern mountains; the average elevation is only 173 m, and more than three-fourths of the land is below 198 m. Its area is about 312,700 square kilometers (Wikidata, from the Statistical Yearbook of Poland; Britannica gives 311,895).

Statistics Poland counted 37,243 thousand people at the end of June 2026, 90 thousand fewer than at the end of 2025, because deaths outnumbered births; almost 60 percent lived in urban areas. Warsaw, the capital, lies on the middle Vistula and is the most prominent of the large centers of the central lowlands.

Warsaw is the biggest city in Poland.

Its old town has colorful houses around a big square. Kraków is an old city with a castle on a hill. Deep under the ground near Kraków is a very old salt mine.

Warsaw, the capital, has about 1.9 million people (2024). In 1944, during World War II, most of its historic center was destroyed. After the war, a five-year campaign by its citizens carefully rebuilt the Old Town, with its churches, palaces and market square.

Kraków, a former capital, sits below the Royal Wawel Castle and has one of Europe's largest market squares. Near Kraków, people have mined rock salt at Wieliczka and Bochnia since the 1200s; the mines have hundreds of kilometers of tunnels with statues carved from salt. In the north, Malbork Castle is a huge medieval castle built of brick.

UNESCO records that more than 85 percent of Warsaw's historic center was destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, and that a five-year reconstruction campaign by its citizens restored the Old Town, an outstanding example of near-total reconstruction (World Heritage Site, 1980). The city had 1,862,402 people in 2024 (Wikidata).

Kraków's historic center (1978), at the foot of Wawel Castle, is a 13th-century merchants' town with Europe's largest market square, 14th-century fortifications, the medieval district of Kazimierz with its old synagogues, and the Jagiellonian University. The Wieliczka and Bochnia royal salt mines have been worked since the 13th century and illustrate the development of European mining from the 13th to the 20th century. Malbork, a 13th-century fortified monastery of the Teutonic Order enlarged after 1309, is a fine example of a medieval brick castle; it was restored in the 19th and early 20th centuries and again after severe damage in World War II.

Long ago, giant sheets of ice covered northern Poland.

When the ice melted, it left hills and thousands of lakes. The south has high, rocky mountains. Winters are snowy.

During the Ice Age, huge ice sheets spread over northern Poland several times. When they melted, they left hills and thousands of lakes, such as those of the Masurian Lakeland. Along the Baltic coast, wind has piled sand into big dunes.

In the south rise the Sudeten and Carpathian mountains. The Tatras are the highest part, reaching about 2,500 meters. Almost all of Poland's rivers flow north to the Baltic Sea: about half of the land drains through the Vistula and a third through the Oder. Poland's weather changes a lot, with snowy winters and warm, rainy summers.

Ice Age glaciers advanced and retreated over northern Poland several times during the Pleistocene, laying down the young deposits of the lowlands. Britannica describes east–west zones: Baltic coastal swamps and dunes; a morainic belt with thousands of lakes, whose southern edge marks the limit of the last ice sheet; the central lowlands, the Polish heartland; and the older highlands and mountains of the south. The Carpathian arc dates from the Paleogene and Neogene; the Tatras, at up to 2,499 m in Britannica, are the highest part of the Polish Carpathians.

Virtually all of Poland drains to the Baltic, about half via the Vistula and a third via the Oder. The climate is transitional between maritime and continental and highly variable; Britannica distinguishes six seasons, from a snowy winter of one to three months to a foggy, humid late autumn. Annual precipitation averages about 610 mm, rising to 787–1,194 mm in the mountains and falling to about 457 mm in the central lowlands.

European bison live in a very old forest in Poland.

They are big and shaggy. Deer and wild pigs live in the woods. Brown bears live in the mountains.

The European bison, also called the wisent, once lived across much of Europe, but it died out in the wild after World War I. People brought bison born in zoos back to the Białowieża Forest, on the border between Poland and Belarus, and now the forest is home to the largest group of free-roaming European bison.

Białowieża is a huge, very old forest of conifer and broadleaf trees. Elsewhere in Poland, deer and wild pigs roam the woods, elk live in the northeast, brown bears live in the Carpathian Mountains, and chamois and marmots live high in the peaks.

Britannica places Poland's fauna in the European–West Siberian province, with nearly 400 vertebrate species, including more than 200 native birds. Deer and wild pigs roam the woods, elk (moose) inhabit the coniferous forests of the northeast, wildcats live in the mountain woods, chamois and marmots live at the highest levels and brown bears in the Carpathians.

The European bison, or wisent, became extinct in the wild after World War I and was reintroduced from zoo-bred animals into national parks on both sides of the Polish-Belarusian border. UNESCO describes the transboundary Białowieża Forest World Heritage Site (first inscribed in 1979) as an immense primary forest of conifers and broadleaved trees covering 141,885 hectares on the watershed between the Baltic and Black seas, home to the largest free-roaming population of its iconic species, the European bison.

About 37 million people live in Poland.

Most people speak Polish. Pierogi are a kind of dumpling. Many dishes use mushrooms from the forest. On a spring day, children throw winter dolls into the river.

About 37 million people live in Poland, and Polish is the official language. It is a Slavic language, closely related to Czech and Slovak. Polish music is famous too: the Romantic pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin was Polish, and festivals celebrate his music.

Traditional dishes include pierogi (dumplings), barszcz (red beet soup), kielbasa sausage with sauerkraut, and bigos, made with cabbage and mushrooms. On March 23, in a custom called Topienie Marzanny, children throw dolls that stand for winter into rivers.

Polish is a West Slavic language closely related to Czech, Slovak and the Sorbian languages, with dialects such as Great Polish, Little Polish, Mazovian and Silesian, and a modern literary form dating from the 16th century. Britannica notes that the language became a touchstone of national identity during the partitions, despite attempts to Germanize or Russify the population. Poles have settled in large numbers abroad, including in the United States, Canada, Argentina and Australia.

Traditional cooking uses garden and forest produce: barszcz, czarnina (duck soup), pierogi, smoked salmon and eel, kielbasa and sauerkraut, bigos with cabbage and mushrooms, and grzybowa mushroom soup. Major holidays are Christian festivals such as Easter and Christmas and national days such as Constitution Day (May 3) and Independence Day (November 11). The white-over-red flag was adopted in 1919.