Lodz

Lodz runs cheap because its best asset is the street itself: walking the full length of Piotrkowska, one of the longest pedestrian promenades in Europe at over 4 kilometres, costs nothing and fills a whole morning past 19th-century tenements and the bronze figures of the Gallery of Great People. The city calls itself the mural capital of Poland for good reason, with hundreds of large-scale Urban Forms murals and street-art pieces scattered across blank factory walls, all free to find on foot using the free street-art map from the tourist info point on Piotrkowska. Manufaktura, the converted Poznanski textile factory, is free to wander, and in summer its open-air city beach costs nothing to lounge on. If you want one paid museum on a budget, time the art collection at the Herbst Palace branch for its free admission day, and skip the medieval-old-town expectations entirely, since Lodz has none and is cheaper and grittier for it. Trains run frequently to Warsaw about two hours away, which makes Lodz an easy low-cost stop between the capital and Krakow or Poznan.