Qibla direction in Tarnów

How to face the Qibla in Tarnów

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards south and move a further 34.3° towards east: the result is the bearing of 145.7°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “south” would be off by more than 30°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Tarnów.

Scholars agree that someone who can see the Kaaba must face it exactly, while someone far away faces its direction (jihat al-Ka‘bah) as precisely as reasonably possible. If a mosque is nearby, its mihrab and prayer lines are the easiest reference, since they were set when the building was laid out. At home, mark the direction once with tape or a small arrow so the whole family prays the same way.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

A straight line drawn on a flat (Mercator) map from Tarnów to Mecca points to 152.4° (south-east), 6.7° away from the correct 145.7°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 6 km longer than the true shortest route. The Qibla follows the great circle, the shortest path on the curved Earth, which is why the bearing differs.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 50.0138° N, 20.9870° E to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). It is the method used by mosque architects and by every serious Qibla calculator, and it gives one exact answer for each point on Earth.

Distance from Tarnów to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 3,583 km from Tarnów as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 3,264 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 4 h 43 min, although most pilgrims from Tarnów connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Tarnów run 2 hours behind Mecca in winter and 1 hour behind Mecca in summer, because of daylight saving time. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Tarnów rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Tarnów

On 365 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Tarnów while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in January (31 days); for example, on 1 January 2027 it happens at 09:11 local time.

The sun is never opposite the Qibla of Tarnów during daylight, so the shadow method does not apply here; the left-hand column is the one to use.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both moments are in daylight in Tarnów: at 11:18 and 11:27 local time, face the sun and you face the Qibla exactly, anywhere in the city.

Tarnów compared with other cities

Compared with Warsaw, 246 km away, the Qibla in Tarnów is turned 1.9° further anticlockwise (145.7° against 147.6°), and Mecca is 205 km closer. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Rzeszów (72 km), prays towards 147.3°, a difference of 1.7°.

Across the 33 cities in Poland on this site, the Qibla ranges from 139.1° in Szczecin to 151.6° in Bialystok, a spread of 12.6°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Poland.

Qibla in cities near Tarnów

• Rzeszów147.3° · 72 km
• Krakow144.1° · 75 km
• Kielce145.9° · 99 km
• Dąbrowa Górnicza143.2° · 132 km
• Bielsko-Biala142.4° · 141 km
• Katowice142.8° · 143 km