Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Castles
Moszna
Moszna Castle (pronounced roughly "MOSH-nah") is a fairy-tale palace in southern Poland's Opole region and one of the most photographed residences in the country. Built up over two centuries by the wealthy Tiele-Winckler family, it bristle…
Lakes
Ścibórz
A broad expanse of water on the Nysa Kłodzka River, with the Sudetes on the horizon — Lake Otmuchów is an artificial reservoir built in 1928–1933 between Otmuchów and Paczków. It combines flood protection and power generation with fishing,…
Hidden gemZoos
Opole
Opole Zoo has opened three times: before the war, after the war, when the menagerie had to be rebuilt from scratch, and after the great flood of 1997, which nearly sealed its fate. Today more than 1,000 animals of over 200 species live on…
Hidden gemMuseums
Opole
The Museum of the Opole Countryside (Muzeum Wsi Opolskiej) is an open-air museum in Opole's Bierkowice district, about 5 km from the city center. Around 50 wooden buildings brought from villages across the region – farmhouses, granaries, a…
Historic sites
Góra Świętej Anny
Stone terraces cut into a former limestone quarry were meant to hold 7,000 seated and 20,000 standing spectators. The amphitheatre on Góra Świętej Anny was built by the Nazis in the 1930s as a stage for propaganda rallies, with a mausoleum…
Churches & monasteries
Głogówek
The Loreto House in Głogówek is a copy of the Holy House (Santa Casa) of Loreto, completed in 1630 at the expense of Count Georg III von Oppersdorff and enclosed within the Franciscan church at 3 Klasztorna Street. It is a "church within a…
Churches & monasteries
Byczyna
At the western end of the village of Biskupice, on the north side of the road, stands a dark, weatherboarded church with a tall timber-frame tower. The name of the carpenter who built it and the names of its founders can still be read on t…
Museums
Ozimek
JuraPark Krasiejów near Opole is a dinosaur park built around a genuine palaeontological site. Excavations here have yielded thousands of remains of Late Triassic amphibians and reptiles, some 230 million years old, including Silesaurus op…
Churches & monasteries
Olesno
The pine trunk behind glass by the high altar bears a plaque dated "July 1444": under this tree, legend says, a girl was saved from robbers through the intercession of St Anne. A wooden church grew up around the pine, and in the 17th centu…
Churches & monasteries
Pawłowiczki
In the fields outside Gościęcin, next to a spring long believed to cure eye ailments, stands the wooden pilgrimage church of St Brice, built in 1661. Locals simply call the area with the church, the former hermitage and the chapels Bryksy.…
Churches & monasteries
Baborów
The weathervane on the turret is cut with the date "1700" – the year building began. The wooden cemetery church of St Joseph in Baborów (listed in some heritage registers as the church of St Joseph and St Barbara) was built in 1700–1702 on…
Amusement parks
Ujazd
In a garden in Olszowa, Cologne Cathedral stands more than 6 metres tall – the highest of 18 models of churches built at a scale of 1:25. The miniature park in the commune of Ujazd (Strzelce Opolskie county) was, according to its owners, t…
Museums
Ozimek
The visit begins in a "space dock hangar": a shuttle takes 50 passengers at a time, launches every 15 minutes and carries them 66 million years back, to the moment when life on Earth was almost wiped out. The Science and Human Evolution Pa…
Other
Moszna
Three years running – in 2009, 2010 and 2011 – the Velká Pardubická, Europe's biggest steeplechase, was won by the same horse: Tiumen, ridden by Josef Váňa. He was born at the stud in Moszna, which since 1948 has occupied the historic stab…
Gardens
Opole
As late as the 1930s, Bolko Island could only be reached by boat. Today bridges lead onto it, and the island, surrounded by the Oder and the Flood Relief Canal, is Opole's green lung: a town park with ponds, old oaks and a zoo. Locals come…
Lakes
Byczyna
The Biskupice-Brzózki reservoir was not built for sunbathers but to save the groundwater — west of Byczyna its level had dropped markedly. Built in 1995–1996 on the Pratwa river, the reservoir covers 42 ha, and on an island surrounded by a…