Tourism, as a mode of interaction, visualization and experience provides a valuable insight into the transformation processes in modern societies and cultures. Travel guides both document and contribute to these processes. This study analyses over forty American and German travel guides to Poland, formerly a politically isolated destination, now a considerably globalized EU member state. In this historically based analysis, the author examines the creation of a tourist gaze of Poland, discussing stereotypes of Poles and the development of the country's touristic attractiveness.