by Amelia Wroblewska
Among Poland’s better-known cities such as Kraków, Warsaw, and Gdańsk, Wrocław has quietly emerged as a compelling travel destination. According to Wrocław’s official city website, more than seven million tourists visited the city in 2025. A three-hour drive northwest from Kraków, Wrocław offers many distinct attractions: a boldly colored market square, many “beach bars” along the Oder River, and a lamplighter who lights old-style lamps by hand every night.
Another popular pastime in the city involves searching for small, bronze gnomes outside of businesses, on the ledges of buildings, and in otherwise out-of-sight places. The gnomes stand less than one foot in height and depict everything from everyday professions to playful adventures, such as conducting an orchestra, traveling, sipping coffee, or even flying to Wrocław on a pigeon. One figurine on Ulica Więzienna (Prison Street) appears to be in jail. Another pair of gnomes are named “Wromeo & Julianka,” sitting on a bench connected by a ribbon.
As the number of miniature statues has grown, keeping track of them has become a challenge.
Two self-proclaimed “Wrocław enthusiasts” named Bartek and Stasiek created a website called krasnalwroclaw.pl. The website cites 1,014 gnomes within Wrocław’s city boundaries as of late 2025. Together with a mobile app of the same name, visitors are able to access an interactive map showing the locations of the gnomes and track the ones they have already found. Apart from this, Wrocław holds an annual September festival celebrating the gnomes, and in winter, locals can be seen dressing the gnomes in winter clothing.
Many tourists may not realize that the playful gnomes reference an anti-communist movement in the 1980s.
BBC correspondent Eliot Stein writes in a 2017 article that the gnomes are a physical tribute to an anti-Soviet resistance movement called the Pomarańczowa Alternatywa (Orange Alternative), which was founded by Waldemar “Major” Frydrych in Wrocław.
One hallmark of the movement was spray-painting gnomes over communist propaganda and over patches of paint used by authorities to cover anti-government graffiti.Stein points out that gnomes were often painted by a member wearing an orange gnome-style hat.
But why gnomes? The Orange Alternative Foundation’s website highlights that the use of a seemingly unserious character both undermined the authority of the communist officials, while raising the morale of Wrocław residents, giving them something to laugh about. Authorities often felt ridiculous trying to arrest people gathered dressed as gnomes. In the end, communist authorities found that cracking down on the group’s absurdism often generated more ridicule than compliance.
Stein adds that in 2001, Wrocław commemorated the history of the Orange Alternative by installing a large gnome statue on the street of the original movement meetings. Later, local sculptor Tomasz Moczek transformed the idea into a public art project. Inspired by Wrocław’s history and daily life, he envisioned bronze gnomes scattered throughout the city, each representing a different profession or story. In an interview with Moczek, Stein found that Moczek designed dozens of the gnomes that visitors can now find.
The project merges the legacy of the 1980s resistance movement with modern Polish democracy, making the gnomes more than an entertaining scavenger hunt: they quietly remind visitors of the whimsical dissent that challenged communist rule.
