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Kraków, Poland

ACCORDING TO HINDU LEGEND, LORD SHIVA ONCE CAST SEVEN stones into the world, and the sites where they landed became thriving centers of spiritual energy. The medieval city of Kraków was purportedly built upon one of them in the seventh century, and is today a magical destination. Situated on the banks of the Vistula River, it is studded with castles, stained-glass churches, palaces, and a 700-year-old university, all ornately adorned with Renaissance, Gothic, Romanesque, or Baroque finishes. You could spend weeks traversing the cobblestoned alleyways of Stare Miasto (Old Town) and Rynek Glowny (Grand Square), savoring wine in dark cellars and composing letters in dimly-lit cafes. (The Art Nouveau-styled Café Jama Michalika at Ulica Florianska 45 has particularly good ambiance.) Be sure to sample some Zubrowka, bison-grass vodka that was once forbidden in America because of its supposedly psychotropic properties.

Kraków has endured its share of anguish, particularly in World War II, when invading Nazis banished most of its Jewish community to nearby concentration camps (including Auschwitz). The old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz memorializes this genocide in the Remu’h Synagogue on Ulica Szeroka. The district has been revitalized in recent years—thanks in part to the movie Schindler’s List, which was filmed here—and now has a vibrant café, bar, and club scene with live klezmer music and poetry slams. For traditional Jewish food, try Café Ariel at Ulica Szeroka 18; to soak in some communist kitsch, check out Propaganda on Ulica Miodowa.

Of its 2.5 million works of art, Kraków is proudest of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine. One of only three female portraits da Vinci painted, she has suffered a little damage in the past 500 years, but remains a knock-out. Her subject is said to be Cecilia Gallerani, the poetry-writing, music-composing, seventeen-year-old mistress of the Duke of Milan. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1939 but returned to Poland a year later and now resides in the Czartoryski Museum at Ulica Sw Jana 19. Another painting revered by Poles is the Black Madonna in the Jasna Góra Monastery in Czȩstochowa, seventy miles northwest of Kraków. Painted in the fourteenth century, she traveled to Poland all the way from Jerusalem, only to be captured in 1430 by a gang of Hussites who cut her face. When she started bleeding, the thieves dropped her and fled. As monks nursed her wounds, water sprung from the ground and continues to flow here to this day. A few centuries later, the Black Madonna saved her monastery from Swedish invaders (which some claim changed the course of the war) and she was crowned Queen and Protector of Poland. She still attracts crowds by the thousands, particularly on holidays, when pilgrims walk here from various parts of the country bearing gifts of cigarettes and kielbasa.