Guide · Krakow, Poland

We count 264 points of interest here, the most famous being:

Wawel Cathedral — The interior features a diverse architectural blend from Romanesque to Neoclassical styles. It houses the Sigismund's Chapel and holds the remains of many Polish kings.

St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków — It reaches a height of eighty meters and features the renowned Veit Stoss wooden altarpiece. Its hourly trumpet call famously breaks off to commemorate a medieval trumpeter shot during a Mongol attack.

Kraków Old Town — The district centers on the Main Market Square, the largest medieval town square in Europe. It is now enclosed by Planty Park, a green belt replacing the former defensive wall.

Pierogi, bigos, and żurek define Polish food. Staples include potatoes, cabbage, sauerkraut, dill, marjoram, caraway seeds, pork, and forest mushrooms. Seasonal gatherings and festive tables feature gołąbki, kotlet schabowy, kielbasa, and barszcz.

Polish cooking leans on deep fermentation—sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers, and sour-rye base for żurek—creating a distinctive acidity not as strongly emphasized in many Central European neighbors. Preservation through brine-curing and slow development of sour flavors is a hallmark.

Core techniques include slow braising (e.g., bigos, gołąbki) and fermentation (e.g., sauerkraut, żurek). Meals are traditionally communal with shared platters, especially for the midday obiad, followed by a lighter supper.

Kraków sits inside the Małopolska (Lesser Poland) region and follows a recognisably Polish national profile, but with a sharp Austro-Hungarian layer on top — most visibly in the Viennese-style Sacher cake, cheesecake, and pischinger baked in the city's cafés, layered onto Slavic staples like pierogi, bigos, and żurek. Local authorities explicitly identify Jewish, Ukrainian, and Armenian influences as further shaping the city's table alongside that Habsburg one.

Obwarzanek krakowski — the boiled-then-baked ring bread sold from orange street carts — holds EU Protected Geographical Indication, one of the few Polish foods tied to a single city rather than a region. It is named alongside Prądnik bread, kukiełka buns, and the aromatic dry Kraków sausage as part of the city's signature bread-and-charcuterie identity.

Maczanka krakowska is a Kraków-specific dish: slow-cooked pork neck or loin braised in a caraway-scented sauce, then piled into a bread roll that has itself been dunked in that same sauce — the name comes from maczać, to dunk. Regional sources bill it as the great-grandmother of the hamburger, and it is named as a distinctively Krakovian preparation rather than a pan-Polish one.

The bagel originated in the Kazimierz quarter, making the modern New York bagel a Kraków export; zapiekanka — the open-faced baguette with mushrooms and cheese from the Plac Nowy stalls — and the late-night ritual around the Okrąglak round kiosk also belong to that same Jewish-quarter street-food tradition.

Kraków-style duck, served with groats and mushrooms, is explicitly named the flagship dish of the best restaurants in Małopolska today. Caraway soup, built around the same spice that defines maczanka, is cited as an older local preparation, and every Kraków dish is said to call for Wieliczka salt from the centuries-active mine.

Within Lesser Poland, the Podhale and Beskids highland sub-region has its own dairy-driven identity: oscypek smoked sheep's-milk cheese grilled with cranberry, stringy smoked korboce, and soft bryndza cheese. The autumn return of sheep from mountain pastures — the redyk festival — is the cultural anchor of that highlander food identity, distinct from the lowland Kraków table.

Małopolska has around 230 products on Poland's list of traditional foods and 14 EU-certified specialities. Despite being landlocked, the region has a defined fresh-water fish tradition built around Ojców trout and locally farmed carp, alongside smoked meats such as Lisiecka and Piaszczańska sausages produced south of Kraków.

Kraków holds the title of European Capital of Gastronomic Culture, an explicit official designation that frames the city as a culinary capital in its own right rather than just another Polish regional kitchen.

Pierogi ruskie — the potato, twarog cheese, and fried-onion dumpling — takes its name from Ruthenian, pointing to the historical region straddling southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. That etymology is part of why Kraków, on the edge of that borderland, treats pierogi ruskie as a particularly local variant rather than just a generic Polish dumpling.

Tatar — beef tartare — is named as a Kraków speciality, served with pickled mushrooms, pickled cucumber, chopped onion, and raw egg yolk, and seasoned locally with yeast extract rather than the Worcestershire sauce more common elsewhere in Poland.

Kiełbasa krakowska — a thick, smoked pork sausage seasoned with garlic — is named the city's signature cured meat, distinct from the broader Polish kiełbasa category.

The Polish bar mleczny (milk bar) — the communist-era self-service canteen — is unusually central to Kraków's everyday food life because of its large student population, serving soups, pierogi, kotlet schabowy, and gołąbki at low prices; Bar Mleczny Żak is named as one current example.

Reserving ahead is the norm for serious dining and any weekend evening; Bottiglieria 1881 books weeks to months out for prime nights, and the popular Kazimierz rooms commonly fill two to three weeks ahead. Midweek walk-ins land a table at most mid-range bistros, while milk bars, casual pierogarnie, and third-wave brunch cafés run queue-and-seat with no bookings taken. Groups of six or more should reserve at least a week ahead in summer or risk an hour-long wait or being split across tables.

Kraków follows the older Polish meal clock: breakfast lands early, the main midday meal (obiad) tends to wrap by mid-afternoon, and many kitchens close earlier than visitors from later-eating cities expect. Milk bars run cafeteria-style with fast turnover and shared tables, fine-dining rooms and cellar restaurants allow an unhurried multi-course evening, and the Main Square terraces are noted for slow kitchens — booking matters more there than for the quick-in, quick-out experience of a milk bar or a late-night zapiekanka window.

Around 10% for good table service is the local norm, with rounding up the bill common for cheaper meals; cash handed to the server is the most reliable route. Many restaurants add a service charge labeled Serwis or obsługa automatically once a table reaches roughly six to ten diners, in which case no further tip is expected unless the service was outstanding. The Polish-language twist: saying Dziękuję (thank you) when handing over cash tells the server to keep the change as the tip, so staying silent or saying Proszę gets your change back.

Lunch 12:00–15:00

Kraków's café ritual traces to the Austro-Hungarian Viennese coffee house model — long single-table sessions with newspapers in dim rooms shared by writers and artists. Surviving landmarks include Jama Michalika, opened 1895 as Cukiernia Lwowska and host of the Zielony Balonik cabaret and the Młoda Polska literary circle, and Noworolski under the Sukiennice arcades on Rynek Główny, pouring coffee in Józef Mehoffer's art-nouveau rooms since 1910.

Kraków was one of the first Polish cities to embrace the third-wave coffee movement, with a wave of independent cafés opening from roughly 2010 through 2020. The specialty ethos is concrete: beans scored 80+ by SCA-certified Q-graders, light roasts preserving origin character, single-origin lots from named farms, and Polish baristas competing in national and international Latte Art, Barista, Brewers Cup and AeroPress championships.

Kraków's specialty infrastructure runs on a handful of in-house and guest roasters, led by Coffee Proficiency in Zabłocie and Karma Coffee Roasters, which began roasting in Kazimierz in 2012 and now runs its own roastery in Nowa Huta. Café bars pull espresso on professional machines and offer pour-over via Hario V60 and Chemex, alongside AeroPress and slow-steeped cold brew, with rotating single-origin Ethiopian, Colombian, Brazilian and Kenyan beans as the everyday repertoire.

Kazimierz, the former Jewish quarter, is the spiritual centre of Kraków's specialty scene, with literary rooms at Cytat and Lokator, craft pours at Knitted Coffee, and the cultural Cheder café run by the Jewish Culture Festival since 2008. The scene spreads north into Kleparz (Wesoła Cafe, Blossom, Bonjour Cava, Bruk Cafe), west into the Old Town corridor (Tektura, Karma Kawiarnia), and south into Podgórze and Zabłocie where Knitted Coffee's Przemysłowa outpost sits beside the MOCAK museum.

Polish café culture values lingering, and Kraków leans into it — the city counts over 1,350 free WiFi hotspots and stand-out laptop-friendly cafés anchoring the nomad scene alongside coworking spaces like Chilli Space and Coffice. Cafés such as Tociekawa, Bruk in Kleparz, Cytat in Kazimierz, I Love Coffee in residential Krowodrza, Fitagain Coffee & Food in the Old Town, and the bookshop-café De Revolutionibus are built around sockets, stable WiFi, all-day food, and the unspoken licence to stay for an afternoon on one coffee and a refill.

The same well-traveled crowd driving Kraków's specialty coffee also sustains a small natural wine scene that arrived later than in Berlin or Warsaw but took root with conviction. Small importers working directly with Georgian, Slovenian and Ukrainian biodynamic producers stock bars like Bottiglieria 1881 and Wino i Fejn in Kazimierz, and the literal crossover is Kawa i Wino — Coffee and Wine — a bar and wine shop in the centre.

Weekend brunch became a genuine local institution around 2015, concentrated in Kazimierz and the Old Town, where cafes and bistros fill Saturday and Sunday mornings as friends and families book out the middle of the day for one slow meal. The form is cafe-led and design-conscious — shakshuka, sourdough toast, poached eggs, flat whites, vine-covered courtyard gardens — and tables turn slowly because nobody rushes. Polish Sunday lunch at family restaurants is the separate competing ritual that fills the early afternoon alongside it.

Breakfast 07:30–12:30
Cafe 08:00–20:00

Krakow runs a real local bar culture built around Kazimierz candle-lit ruin bars and Old Town shot bars, where Poles drink vodka straight as ice-cold shots, toast "na zdrowie" (to health) before each round, and chase each round with zakąski — a pickle, herring, or bread with lard — to soften the burn. Locals go out late rather than after-work: bar activity peaks from late evening into the early hours, and shot-bar chains keep most branches open through the night. Polish bar culture includes food — every vodka round is paired with a snack — and the night typically ends at the zapiekanka windows of Plac Nowy in Kazimierz.

The most distinctive local eating pattern is the post-midnight food ritual, not a late sit-down dinner: most restaurants close before the drinking crowd heads home, but the city's appetite does not. After the bars empty, locals stream to the zapiekanka windows at the round Okrąglak rotunda on Plac Nowy in Kazimierz for a half-baguette with melted cheese and mushrooms, eaten standing or perched on the square long after the dinner hour ends. The post-bar zapiekanka is a local rite of passage and — alongside kebab and pizza windows in the Old Town — has replaced the after-dinner drink as the night's social punctuation.

Dinner 18:00–22:00
Bar 15:00–02:00

The currency is the Polish złoty (PLN), and the 200 zł note causes real friction at small shops in Kraków. Market stalls, kiosks and old-fashioned corner shops routinely refuse it or lack the change to break it for a coffee or tram ticket, since they rarely stock enough small coins. Large notes break cleanly inside supermarkets, hotels and shopping-centre tills; 10, 20 and 50 zł notes are the practical choice for everyday cash buys.

Cards work in nearly every restaurant, shop, museum and taxi, with contactless tap-to-pay as the default and mobile wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay) widely supported at the same terminals. Cash still earns its keep at outdoor market stalls, some milk bars and pierogarnie, cloakrooms, church donation boxes and tipping — Polish terminals don't always offer a tip line, so a few zloty in small notes makes gratuities smoother. American Express is accepted far less reliably than Visa or Mastercard.

City-centre Kantors are the cheapest route to PLN; Kantor Grosz at Sławkowska 4 has the best reputation for tight spreads. Airport desks, the Rynek Główny (Main Square), and Floriańska Street offices are tourist traps with poor rates and 0% commission signs that hide profit inside the rate. Polish-bank ATMs apply the local rate when PLN is selected; the home-currency DCC option on the screen costs noticeably more.

A documented Krakow scam: a large sign outside a Kantor prominently displays a strong rate for Albanian lek or Serbian dinar so it resembles a great euro offer, while the actual euro rate printed inside sits around 3.12 PLN. Victims lose roughly a quarter of the amount exchanged; the small-print rate for the currency being sold is the figure that matters.

Tipping outside restaurants is never mandatory but standard for personal service. Taxis and ride apps: round up to the nearest 5–10 PLN, or add 5–10% extra for luggage help or a difficult pickup. Hotel housekeeping 5–10 PLN per night; porters 5–10 PLN per bag; concierge 10–20 PLN for special help. Tour guides 10–30 PLN per person for group walking tours, more for private guides or long days. Apartment rentals, self-check-in, and counter service expect no tip.

Traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, with rental cars fitted with left-hand drive controls.

Kraków uses a French-style round two-pin grounded socket (Type E) at 230 V and 50 Hz, with the ungrounded Type C Europlug fitting the same outlet.

Poland runs on the metric system — distances on road signs and maps in kilometers, weight in kilograms, liquids in liters, and temperatures on weather forecasts and outdoor signs in Celsius.

Wodociągi Miasta Krakowa treats water from the Raba and Rudawa rivers and the Dobczyce Reservoir through coagulation, sand filtration, ozonation, and chlorination, adding UV at the Raba plant, making the city's tap water safe to drink straight from the faucet. Its Central Laboratory monitors every batch against both Polish requirements and the EU Drinking Water Directive 2020/2184; a 2025 Cracow University of Technology study at four treatment plants found PFAS below the limit and no endocrine-disrupting compounds. Bottled water is a cultural preference here, not a safety response.

Galeria Krakowska, Bonarka City Center, and major fast-food chains host free public toilets. Stand-alone public facilities in central Krakow usually charge a small per-use fee, paid to an attendant or at a coin-operated turnstile.

On roughly seven Sundays a year — the last Sunday of January, April, June, and August, plus Palm Sunday and the two Sundays before Christmas Eve — supermarkets, malls, and clothing shops in Krakow run normal hours. Every other Sunday they are closed by national law. Żabka convenience stores, petrol stations, and shops inside railway stations stay open as legal exemptions.

Since 1 July 2023, Krakow has banned takeaway alcohol sales citywide from midnight to 05:30. The rule targets off-premise retail only — bars, restaurants, and clubs can still serve drinks on-site during those hours.

Drinking alcohol on streets, in parks, on public transport, and similar public spaces is banned across Poland, enforced by police and the municipal guard (Straż Miejska). On-the-spot fines apply; disorderly intoxication can lead to a sobering-up facility at the drinker's own cost.

Smoking and vaping are banned in enclosed public spaces — restaurants, bars, cafés, workplaces, public transport, and stations — under Poland's 1995 tobacco law. Outdoor smoking is allowed on streets, but bus and tram stops are commonly no-smoking zones.

This destination is inside the single roaming zone (EU/EEA, Moldova, Ukraine) — guests from the same zone need nothing extra; roaming works like at home.

Krakow's signature craft is the szopka, a hand-made nativity crib surrounding the Nativity scene with miniature replicas of the city's baroque churches, Gothic cathedrals and landmarks — sometimes reaching two metres tall. Inscribed on UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2018, the practice dates to the 19th century and stays alive through an annual competition on the first Thursday of December, when makers parade their work across the Main Square to the Historical Museum, which displays the entries through February.

Although Krakow sits far from the Baltic, it was a major halt on the medieval Amber Road, and Baltic amber — locally called Baltic gold — remains the city's most recognisable jewellery tradition. Cloth Hall stalls and Old Town galleries set finished pieces in silver, with rare inclusions of preserved insects or plant fragments millions of years old. Real amber floats in a saturated saltwater solution — a test most Cloth Hall vendors accept — and suspiciously low prices usually mean copal or dyed glass rather than the genuine fossilised resin.

Obwarzanek krakowski is a parboiled, braided ring of wheat dough — 12–17 cm across, sprinkled with salt, poppy or sesame seeds and baked until the crust is crisp and the crumb soft. First recorded in 1394 in the court accounts of Queen Jadwiga and King Władysław II Jagiełło, it has carried EU Protected Geographical Indication status since 2010, restricting authentic production to the city of Kraków and the neighbouring Wieliczka county. Vendors still wheel it through the streets from wicker baskets, mostly in the morning.

Bolesławiec pottery — heavy stoneware hand-stamped with cobalt-blue dots, peacock eyes and floral medallions — fills the Cloth Hall stalls and dedicated showrooms throughout the Old Town. The craft originated in the Lower Silesian town of Bolesławiec, but Krakow is one of the cities where the best-curated retail selection sits, with shops such as Niebieska Kropka concentrating the genuine hand-painted pieces. Modern makers are pushing brighter contemporary patterns alongside the traditional motifs, so the kitchenware doubles as decoration.

Polish distilling has run since the early Middle Ages, and Krakow's bottles — gift-packaged clear vodkas, herbal honeys, and fruit liqueurs — anchor the edible souvenir trade. Żubrówka (bison-grass), Krupnik (honey-herbal) and Goldwasser (gold-flecked) line the shelves, alongside small-batch nalewka — house-infused liqueurs made from cherries, walnuts, herbs or honey that are almost impossible to find abroad. Polished decanters double as display pieces once the bottle is empty.

Poland is the world's leading producer of hand-blown glass bombki, and most workshops cluster in the southern regions, making Krakow one of the country's top retail centres for them. Apple-sized spheres in glossy red, blue or gold — often covered in hand-painted geometric patterns — dominate, but figurative designs depicting Krakow landmarks, Nativity scenes and angels are the local signature. A few Old Town shops trade in nothing else year-round, and the annual Christmas market around the Cloth Hall multiplies the selection.

Several of Poland's larger fashion labels run design studios or factories in Krakow — including Vistula, House, Mohito and 4F, plus the chain Reserved, the kids' label 5-10-15 and the women's-wear lines Simple and Solar. Independent ateliers such as MISBHV, Pat Guzik, Mapaya and Bohoboco anchor a younger contemporary-design scene that clusters in Kazimierz's boutique lanes.

Wawel — founded in Krakow in 1898 and named after the royal castle above the Vistula — is one of Poland's heritage confectioners. Its range leans on filled bars, fruit jellies and boxed pralines rather than plain chocolate: the nut-and-cream Danusia, the burnt-caramel Krówkowy, the fruit-jelly Mieszanka Krakowska (the Kraków mix), plus malaga-style pralines and chocolate-covered plums (śliwki w czekoladzie). Boxes, bars and decorated figurines line the shelves of Old Town delicatessens and souvenir shops.

Hand-carved wooden chess sets and hand-painted boxes — drawing on the folk-art motifs of the surrounding Małopolska region — are the heavier keepsakes stocked alongside amber in the Cloth Hall stalls. Smaller carved figurines and household objects come from regional workshops rather than mass production, with finishing quality and weight the most reliable signal of genuine handcraft over the printed imports that dominate the Floriańska street souvenir shops.

Polish linen tablecloths and runners in white or ecru — typically finished with cutwork or embroidered borders — are made by small regional workshops rather than factory runs. Genuine pieces sit alongside the mass-printed T-shirts in the Cloth Hall stalls, with weight, visible hand-stitching and natural flax weave distinguishing the real thing from synthetic look-alikes. Embroidered folk-costume trim from the Małopolska region shows up in the same stalls.

Krakow enjoys a strong indoor-day culture: rain on a weekday is often welcomed as a chance to explore an 'incredible indoor world' rather than a setback, with an abundance of museums, galleries, historic interiors, and covered shopping spaces such as Galeria Krakowska and the centuries-old Sukiennice. Even when the rain falls on the weekend, backup crowds still swirl indoors, making it easy to fill a wet day around the Rynek Underground beneath the Main Market Square. The city’s real indoor richness also extends beyond the Old Town to Wawel Hill interiors, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, modern art at MOCAK, and playful attractions like the Kraków Pinball Museum and indoor water park, so visitors rarely run out of sheltered options even in the coolest months.

Kraków ranks among Europe's safest large cities; violent crime is rare, and pickpocketing around the Old Town and Market Square is the main visitor concern.

Kraków's reported crime rate sits above the Polish national average, driven mostly by property and economic offenses while violent crime remains a small share of the total.

The U.S. State Department classifies Kraków as a low-threat location for crime affecting foreign interests, with no special crime indicator on Poland's travel advisory.

Pickpocket teams concentrate around Rynek Glowny (Main Market Square), ulica Florianska, the Cloth Hall and Wawel Castle, using distraction tricks while a partner lifts wallets and phones. Crowded rush-hour trams and buses around the centre see the same pattern; the area immediately outside Krakow Glowny station is flagged as higher-risk at night. Reported in the U.S. State Department advisory for Poland and echoed by local and Lonely Planet guides.

Kantor exchange offices in the Old Town and around the train station post eye-catching headline rates then add hidden commissions, shortchange on the count, or swap in lower-denomination notes after the deal is done. The U.S. State Department, Lonely Planet and Krakow-specific guides all flag this as a specifically tourist-targeted pattern, and recommend changing money at banks or at airport/hotel ATMs only.

Touts on Flarianska, Szewska and around Rynek Glowny invite visitors (often stag groups) into clubs promising cheap or free entry, then present a bill inflated to hundreds or thousands of PLN for drinks nobody ordered. Bouncers pressure payment on the spot; the U.S. State Department notes threats against customers who refuse. This is the pattern Lonely Planet specifically warns about when it steers visitors away from Old Town promoters.

Unmarked drivers approach arrivals at Krakow Airport (Balice) and Krakow Glowny train station quoting a flat price several times the metered rate, sometimes claiming the meter is broken or offering a 'good price' that balloons on arrival. Multiple local guides and the U.S. advisory recommend app-based rides (Bolt, Uber, FreeNow) or official taxi ranks as the only reliable alternative.

The post-war socialist district is fine by day for its Soviet-era architecture, but has thin night-time infrastructure, fewer late transport options, and side streets that travellers are advised not to wander after dark.

The streets around the main railway station and central bus station draw pickpockets in the ticket halls and platforms, especially around arrival times, with occasional aggressive begging and tourist-targeted bars nearby; lingering late at night is widely advised against.

Krakow sits outside Poland's documented severe-crime victim pool. Kidnappings are rare enough that the U.S. travel advisory carries no K indicator, with rare cases targeting wealthy local individuals or families for ransom rather than foreign visitors. The country's most acute severe category — forced-labour exploitation — instead falls on Latin American and Ukrainian migrant workers recruited through agencies that withhold documents and impose fake debts, a population separate from short-term travellers.

A licensed Kraków taxi carries a side number stamped with the city coat of arms, a visible fare sticker, and the driver's ID inside. Official vehicles also display the taxi company name and phone number on doors and roof — cars showing only a crest without a company name are not legitimate. Unmarked cars outside the main railway station and Kraków Airport are the documented entry point for overcharging and assaults, so the safer option is the licensed rank, an app-based booking, or the airport train to Kraków Główny.

In the Old Town and Kazimierz, strangers — often friendly young women offering a free drink — steer visitors into clubs near Rynek Główny, where drinks arrive without posted prices and the bill later runs into thousands of złoty, sometimes backed by intimidating security. Legitimate Kraków bars do not recruit customers from the street, so the safer rule is to enter only venues you chose yourself, never one suggested by someone who approached you first.

Victims of spiked drinks have been robbed in Kraków bars and clubs, so the rule is to never leave a drink unattended and to decline drinks brought by strangers. Tourists have also reported cards being processed on a portable terminal and bills arriving far higher than the order — checking the receipt and refusing to re-enter a PIN after a first decline is the standard defence.

Pickpockets work Rynek Główny, Floriańska Street, crowded trams into the centre, and busy airport buses, often in teams using a distraction while a partner lifts a wallet. Cash, passports, and cards should be kept out of sight in a zipped front pocket rather than a backpack, especially at main rail stations and on overnight trains.

Standalone ATMs along tourist streets — especially Szewska in the Old Town — are linked to card skimming and dynamic-currency-conversion traps. Withdrawals should be made at commercial bank branches, inside large hotels, shopping malls, or the airport, where skimmers are regularly inspected and where any dispute is easier to escalate.

At Kraków Airport (Balice), the safest exit is the train to Kraków Główny rather than any car offered inside the arrivals hall or just outside the terminal. Unofficial drivers loitering there routinely quote several times the legitimate fare and have been linked to assaults, so the train or a clearly branded licensed taxi from the rank is the recommended alternative.

Personal risk in Kraków rises after dark on isolated or poorly lit streets — particularly south of Podgórze, on the outer side of Planty Park, and on quiet side streets off the main tourist clusters. The recommended pattern is to travel in groups after dark and stick to well-populated, well-lit arteries around Rynek Główny and the centre of Kazimierz.

Consular reporting flags an alarming pattern of inflated card bills in Kraków city-centre nightclubs, with incidents of nightclub-security aggression often going hand-in-hand with the overcharging. Paying in cash and leaving with a copy of the bill is the cited defence against disputed transactions.

Thieves posing as plain-clothes police approach tourists — typically asking to inspect a wallet, ID, credit card, and PIN — and sift through the contents while appearing to examine them, with cash and cards vanishing before the wallet is handed back. No genuine officer will ever ask for a PIN; refusing to hand over cards or share the PIN, and asking to be shown a badge or to walk to a police station, is the recommended response.