The Łupków Railway Tunnel is a fascinating piece of living history tucked away in the mountains on the border of the Bieszczady and Low Beskids — a 416-metre passage under the Carpathians that has been linking Poland and Slovakia for over 150 years. If you love railways, history, and wild mountain scenery all in one place, this is your spot.
The area around Stary Łupków is beautifully remote, wrapped in dense Carpathian forest and rolling ridges. The tunnel entrance sits at around 630 metres above sea level, and the landscape shifts dramatically with the seasons — fiery autumn colours, crisp winter silence, and lush green slopes in summer. There is a quiet, almost forgotten atmosphere here, far from the tourist crowds, that makes the visit feel like stepping back in time.
How to get thereOpened on 30 May 1874 as part of the First Hungarian-Galician Railway connecting Budapest with Lviv, the tunnel was blown up by Polish defenders on 1 September 1939 to halt a Slovak military advance — a little-known episode of the September Campaign that gives this quiet mountain spot a surprisingly dramatic backstory.