Sanok sits on the San River in southeastern Poland, where the country starts to lift toward the Bieszczady Mountains. It is a small town, but not a thin one: castles, churches, wooden village architecture, and the strange, unsettling art of Zdzislaw Beksinski all sit within an easy day on foot.
The best reason to come is the Museum of Folk Architecture, one of Poland's strongest open-air museums. It gathers wooden churches, cottages, workshops, and a reconstructed Galician market square from the cultures that once met in this corner of the Carpathians. Across the river, Sanok Castle holds the Historical Museum and the largest collection of Beksinski works.
Sanok works well as a cultural stop before or after the Bieszczady. It is not a resort town, and that helps. Spend the morning in the skansen, cross back for the castle and old centre, then keep an evening free for the river paths or a simple meal around the rynek.