Start where the locals shop, not where the tour groups stop
Krakow's souvenir trade splits cleanly in two. There is the stuff produced for people who have four hours and a coach waiting - fridge magnets, plastic amber, dragon keyrings, a lot of it in the ground-floor arcade of the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice, soo-KYEN-nee-tseh). And there is the stuff Poles actually buy, make and eat, which is better, usually cheaper, and rarely more than a ten-minute walk away.
The single best move you can make is to go to Stary Kleparz (STA-rih KLE-pash), the covered market just north of the Barbican, about five minutes' walk from the Main Square. It is a working food market, not a tourist attraction. Traders are there for locals doing their weekly shop, prices reflect that, and almost everything on this page that goes in your mouth is available there for a fraction of Old Town prices. It runs mornings through afternoon most days and winds down early; Sundays are the day not to plan around it.
Below is what is genuinely worth carrying home, roughly in order of how pleased the recipient will be.
Food and drink: what to buy, what it costs, what customs will take off you
Oscypek (os-TSIH-pek) is the smoked sheep's-milk cheese from the Tatra highlands, spindle-shaped and stamped with a pattern from the wooden mould. It is salty, firm, faintly smoky, and vacuum-packed it survives a flight comfortably. Expect somewhere in the region of 15 to 25 PLN a piece at a market, considerably more from a stall on the square. The griddled version sold in the street with cranberry sauce is a snack, not a souvenir - eat that one there.
Polish honey (miod, myoot) is the underrated buy. Buckwheat honey is dark, malty and almost savoury; heather honey is thick and expensive; lime blossom is the crowd-pleaser. A jar runs roughly 25 to 50 PLN depending on variety and size. Buy it at the market from someone with a beekeeper's licence card pinned to the stall.
Dried forest mushrooms - boletes and chanterelles, strung in loops or bagged - cost a fraction of what the same thing sells for in a British or American deli, weigh nothing, and last years. This is the best value-per-gram souvenir in the city.
Smalec (SMA-lets), herbed pork lard with crackling and apple in it, sounds terrible and is delicious on rye bread with a pickled cucumber. It travels fine in a sealed jar.
For vodka, the ones worth the suitcase space are Zubrowka (zhoo-BROOF-ka), flavoured with bison grass from the Bialowieza forest, Zoladkowa Gorzka, which is the bitter-herbal one, and Starka, an oak-aged rye vodka that drinks more like a whisky and makes a serious gift. Buy from a supermarket or a proper liquor shop rather than a souvenir shop; the airside duty-free markup is real. Standard allowances let you carry one litre of spirits into the UK or US, so plan accordingly.
Sweets to fill the gaps in the bag: krowki (KROOF-kee, chewy milk fudge), Ptasie Mleczko (marshmallow in chocolate), Wedel chocolate, and Torun gingerbread if you see it.
Now the part nobody tells you. If you are flying back to Great Britain, personal imports of meat and dairy from the EU are prohibited - that includes the oscypek and the smalec, however sealed and however sad it makes you. Honey, mushrooms, sweets and alcohol are fine. US rules differ again: commercially packaged hard cheese is generally admissible while meat products generally are not, and you must declare food on the customs form. Rules change; check your own country's current guidance before you spend money on cheese you cannot land.
One more practical detail: honey, jars and anything liquid over 100ml has to go in checked baggage. If you are travelling hand-luggage only, buy your vodka airside.
Amber: how to tell the real thing from the plastic
Baltic amber is fossilised resin, tens of millions of years old, and Poland has been trading it since prehistory. It is also the most faked thing in Krakow. Rough rules that will keep you out of trouble:
Real amber is warm to the touch and light in the hand - noticeably lighter than glass or plastic of the same size. It floats in heavily salted water and sinks in fresh. Under UV it fluoresces. Inclusions of insects or plant matter are real but expensive; a perfect, dramatic, cheap insect is almost certainly resin poured over a modern bug. Colour ranges from pale butterscotch through cognac to near-black and green, and none of those is more "authentic" than another.
Buy from an established shop with a physical address and a certificate rather than from a street table or a beach-holiday-style stall. Boruni, which runs an amber gallery and small museum in the centre, is the name most often pointed at, and there are several long-standing jewellers on and around the Main Square and in Kazimierz. Prices vary by a factor of five for visually similar pieces, so walk into three shops before you buy anything above about 200 PLN. A simple silver-set pendant might be 150 to 400 PLN; large, clear, inclusion-bearing pieces run into the thousands.
Pottery, szopki and the crafts with a real tradition behind them
Boleslawiec pottery (bo-le-SWA-vyets) is the hand-stamped blue-and-white stoneware you have seen in kitchen shops at home for triple the price. It is made in Lower Silesia, it is oven, microwave and dishwasher safe, and several shops in the Old Town and Kazimierz carry the proper marked stuff. Check the base: genuine pieces are stamped with the maker and "Hand made in Poland". Wrap it in your dirty laundry and it will survive the hold.
A szopka (SHOP-ka) is the thing to buy if you want something no other city can sell you. These are Krakow nativity scenes - towering, wildly coloured constructions built from foil and card in the shape of the city's own towers and domes, with the nativity tucked inside. The tradition is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and there is an annual competition in early December when the makers carry their work to the Main Square before the entries go on public display at the city museum. Full-size competition pieces are art objects with prices to match; small handmade ones sold through the museum shop and craft stalls are a few hundred złoty and pack surprisingly well.
Also genuine, also portable: hand-blown and hand-painted glass Christmas baubles, papercuts (wycinanki, vih-tsee-NAN-kee) in folk patterns, sheepskin slippers and thick wool socks from the highlands, and Polish linen.
Where to go for each thing, and what to skip
For food, Stary Kleparz first, a supermarket second - Polish supermarkets carry good honey, decent vodka and every sweet mentioned above at ordinary prices.
For crafts and jewellery, the Cloth Hall arcade is fine for a browse but is priced for footfall; the shops on the surrounding streets and in Kazimierz are generally better value and better quality. Note that the Cloth Hall's upper floor is a nineteenth-century art gallery, not more stalls, so do not go up there expecting shopping.
For secondhand and unexpected things, the flea market around Plac Nowy in Kazimierz at weekends, and the larger Sunday market held near the Hala Targowa on the eastern edge of the centre, turn up old glass, communist-era enamelware, postcards and books. Go early.
For Polish high-street fashion - Reserved, Mohito, Cropp, House and similar - the big shopping centre beside the main railway station has all of them under one roof, five minutes from the Old Town.
Skip: dragon-branded anything, "amber" sold from a folding table, mass-printed cityscape prints, and Polish pottery without a maker's stamp on the base.
The paperwork that gets you money back
If you live outside the EU - which now includes UK residents - you can reclaim Polish VAT on qualifying purchases above a minimum spend, currently in the region of 200 PLN in a single shop on the same day. You need to ask for the tax-free document at the till, keep the receipt attached, and get it validated at the airport before you check the goods in. Larger shops advertise the scheme with a sticker in the window; small market traders are not part of it.
Practical last word: buy the heavy, breakable things on your final day and the vodka after security, but buy the mushrooms and honey on day one at Kleparz. The good stalls sell out of the interesting varieties by mid-morning, and there is no second chance at the airport.
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