Zakopane
Wojewodschaft Kleinpolen, 29.369 inhabitants and ten times more visitors. Zakopane is called Poland's winter capital and is the main tourist attraction in the south, drawing over 3.000.000 visitors each year. It is famous for: its enchanting mountainous landscape; the strong regional dialect of the 'Goralen' people (which sounds strange even to Polish ears); skiers, hikers and, in short, tourists, who have turned the sleepy town into a mecca for winter sports. Zakopane officially become a spa resort over a hundred years ago. But the town also has a dark history: in the 17th and 18th centuries the borderlands between Poland and Austria were home to bandits, among them Janosik, a figure of Polish folk legend who came from what is now Slovakia. Others were attracted to the area when gold ores were found in the mountains. At the end of the 19th century, 3 Polish painters made a huge (115 x 16 m) panorama of the Tatra mountains and presented it in Munich.