Only a handful of European cities can claim to contain little to offend the eye. Venice is one and Prague another. But it is perhaps Kraków in southern Poland that is the most pleasantly surprising to visitors.

For centuries the seat of Polish kings before they decamped to Warsaw in 1791, the city and the surrounding area areawash with historic grandeur that somehow escaped the curse of Nazi looting as well as the philistine destruction of the communist years.