The best bars and cafés Krakow

It is in this café with dimmed lights and beautiful wooden furniture that you can enjoy the best hot chocolate (melted or czekolada) in Krakow with a piece of homemade cake. For more than a decade, the New Province has been a meeting place for intellectuals, students and gourmets and a place that is always friendly, quiet and very pleasant. In the evening, the room becomes a little more lively, where one can meet artists, literary figures and students in conversation or in the middle of a date in the dim light of the spotlights.

Pijalnia Wódki i Piwa is a chain with franchises all over the city and in every town in the country. Its founders understood one essential thing: offering good vodka blends at low prices, with responsive service, is what Poles want when they go out at night. Wódki i Piwa is a must for all those who want to enjoy their evening out, and it's a 5-minute affair between the entrance, the order and the shot. Always packed on weekends. We recommend the lemon and porterwodka shots.

Together with its brother Szczepański Square, it is simply the beating heart of Krakow's nightlife. It's THE place to go for cheap beers, a cheap vodka/snacks combo or a slightly mediocre meal on the go, but one that serves its purpose well in preparing the stomach for the night ahead. The place is busy all day long, but in the evening it fills up little by little with its public of young people and students on the go. Big atmosphere at the end of the week. Try it if you want to experience a typical Krakow evening!

This coffee shop cabaret could also among other sights of the city. Founded in 1895, it is famous for the movement Młoda Polska which formed and developed here. It was the haunt of writers, painters and other artists who belonged to the movement. Its interior decoration, in Art Nouveau style, was created by an artist scenographer, Karol Frycz. With a stage... since it was a cabaret. You can make a coffee break, but also only "visit" the interior without getting away, staff has the custom.

Le Hevre is a hybrid bar-restaurant-cultural center, partly to justify its installation in the premises of one of the abandoned synagogues of the neighborhood. The setting is incredible and the rehabilitated rooms showcase this former place of worship very well. The high prices for the city's standards drive away the young people and students, who usually frequent the local bars, and there is a more affluent and less party-oriented audience. On sunny days, the high windows aligned along its length give it a fairy-tale air.

On the corner of Szeroka Square, the Krokodyli is a must-see establishment when you venture into the alleys that separate the old Jewish quarter from its Christian counterpart. Coffee break, drinks with friends or disco on the dance floor, this bar is lively, especially in the evening, without the sometimes suffocating crowd of Nowy Square. The terrace at the back is a nice little hidden green area (you can order pasta and Pierogis from Warsztat and eat them here). An excellent spot to relax in the middle of the day in summer.

If you love herring and that you want to feel a such true Pole, it is here that it is necessary to come. It is undoubtedly the best bar with herring of the city. 

Excellent ice cream and a terrace on the Rynek.

This bar at the back of a courtyard overlooking the Rynek is famous throughout the city and was founded in 1956 as a literary cabaret. It has a long history of dissent against the communist regime and was a den of the intelligentsia, with acidic and committed shows. Today the program is varied and offers cabaret shows every Saturday night and jazz concerts on Thursday. The hall has certainly the most Cracovian atmosphere, being in a large vaulted brick cellar. It is a student meeting place.

The Propaganda is part of the legend of its eponymous bar-booth, which trained an entire generation of young people in a Moscow finally free of communism. It copies the industrial style, all brick and steel; the decoration loaded with nostalgia, with period posters, protraits of Lenin, old radios and old cameras and the spirit, punk, with loud music and generous alcohol. The recipe works well and there are plenty of people to get through the unfriendly double steel doors that mark its entrance.

Frequented by genuine beer lovers, this pub offers its customers a wide selection of Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Czech, German and Belgian beers. In addition to this, you can enjoy the dishes that do the job: nachos, chicken wings, burgers. In short, not large kitchen but efficient kitchen!

The courtyard of the RE is its real treasure, and its beer garden in the summer season until the last beautiful days of autumn is among the most authentic and most frequented of the city. Part of its charm comes from the relative isolation of this shady garden courtyard, hard to find at the back and a bit off the main roads. It is therefore still largely occupied by locals. The interior of the bar is little different from its neighbors, but it often hosts concerts. Both are very often crowded in summer.

The Tram Bar is dedicated to the appreciation of the king of transportation in the city, the streetcar. It is above all an original decoration motif that gives a real cachet to the bar's unique room. Some of the tables, placed on a platform, are equipped with benches made of old streetcars from the 1980s, in varnished wood. This cool spot is popular at the beginning of the evening before going to the club. It proposes in particular very good mixed shots and original cocktails which make as much the happiness of the customers as of the very enthusiastic barmen!