Zakopane

The first written records of Zakopane date from the 17th century and describe a mountain glade called Zakopisko; in 1676 the settlement had just 43 inhabitants. It remained a poor highland village for two centuries. The first church, the small wooden one beside today's Old Cemetery, was built in 1847. In the second half of the 19th century the physician Tytus Chałubiński helped make its mountain air famous, Zakopane officially became a spa in 1886, and in 1889 Władysław Zamoyski bought the Zakopane estates at auction to save the Tatra forests. The railway arrived on 1 October 1899, and by the end of the century the population had reached about 3,000.

The early 20th century made it Poland's leading mountain resort. The Wielka Krokiew ski jump opened in 1925, the Kasprowy Wierch cable car was completed in 1936 and the Gubałówka funicular in 1938, and by 1930 about 60,000 tourists came each year. The town hosted the Nordic World Ski Championships in 1929 and 1939 and, also in 1939, the Alpine World Ski Championships — the first held outside the Alps.

German troops entered Zakopane on 4 September 1939. In March 1940 officers of the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo met for a week at Villa Tadeusz to coordinate the suppression of Polish resistance, and the Gestapo held prisoners in the basement of a building that opened as the Palace Museum in March 2024. The town was an underground staging point between Poland and Hungary, and in 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans deported thousands of Varsovians here. The occupation ended in January 1945. Later in the 20th century the Tatra National Park was founded and the town expanded to serve ever larger numbers of visitors.

Zakopane is the centre of Goral culture — the culture of the Polish highlanders, with its own speech, music, costume, food and architecture. From the late 19th century it also drew writers, painters and musicians, above all in the Young Poland period, who saw the highlands as a source of Polish identity. Stanisław Witkiewicz turned the motifs of Carpathian wooden building into the Zakopane Style, first used at Villa Koliba in 1892–93 and later for villas, a chapel at Jaszczurówka and the Tatra Museum. The composer Karol Szymanowski lived at Villa Atma, the poet Jan Kasprowicz at Villa Harenda, and the painter and playwright Witkacy, Witkiewicz's son, was part of the same circle.

Witkiewicz himself, the writer Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer and the sculptor Władysław Hasior lie in the Old Cemetery at Pęksowy Brzyzek, among carved wooden and stone tombstones, alongside the highland storyteller Sabała. The town's museums and galleries — the Tatra Museum and its branches, the Władysław Hasior Gallery and the Kornel Makuszyński Museum among them — keep this history in view.

Winter sport is the other identity. Zakopane has hosted world championships and many World Cup ski-jumping weekends, and the ski jumper Kamil Stoch, a three-time Olympic champion, was born here. Christmas and New Year are celebrated in highland style, with dances, decorated horse-drawn sleighs called kuligs, and roast lamb. Each August the International Festival of Mountain Folklore brings dance groups from mountain regions around the world.

About 25,000 people lived in Zakopane in 2024, making it the second town of Podhale after Nowy Targ, but it receives well over two million visitors a year, and almost everything in its economy turns on them. Many highland families rent rooms to visitors, and private landlords still meet arriving trains and buses to offer them; restaurants, shops, lifts and guiding make up much of the rest.

The town lies 800 to 1,100 metres above sea level, and its houses spread up the slopes in every direction from the junction of Krupówki and Kościuszki streets, from old wooden farmsteads to modern villas built in highland style. Life follows two high seasons: winter, when the ski areas on Kasprowy Wierch and Gubałówka fill up, especially around Christmas and in February; and summer, when hikers, climbers and day visitors crowd the trails and Krupówki is crowded with visitors to its shops and restaurants.

The pressures of that popularity are part of daily life: traffic jams on the road from Kraków on fine weekends and holidays, and overcrowded trails in the national park in summer.

Highland food in Zakopane is built on sheep's milk. Oscypek is a smoked cheese of salted sheep's milk, made only in the Tatra region by a shepherd known as a baca and pressed into decorated moulds; it is often pan-fried and served with cranberry jam, and the genuine cheese is made from May to September. Imitations made from cow's milk are sold under similar names. Bryndza podhalańska, a soft sheep's cheese from Podhale, has protected status under EU law, and żętyca is a milk drink made in the region.

Restaurants in wooden highland-style buildings serve the hearty dishes of Lesser Poland: kwaśnica, a sauerkraut soup with potatoes and ribs; placek po zbójnicku, "robber's pancake", potato pancakes with goulash on top; and góral tea, tea laced with alcohol, against the cold. Trout is the town's speciality fish, and fried-fish eateries around town serve a quick, cheap meal.

In summer the market along Krupówki sells oscypek, fruit, vegetables and meat alongside highland clothing and leather goods, and cheese is sold in town every day. Wooden inns on and around Krupówki present highland cooking, often with live music, and a few old houses on Kościeliska Street keep a quieter version of the same tradition.