JuraPark Bałtów

Before concrete tyrannosaurs arrived in Bałtów, there was a legend about the devil. A mark in the rock above the Kamienna valley, known as the Devil's Footprint (Czarcia Stopka), was said to have been left by the devil leaping across the river. In 2001 geologist Dr Gerard Gierliński looked into the story and found that it was the track of a large carnivorous dinosaur. That discovery gave rise to Poland's first dinosaur park, which opened on 7 August 2004.

History: from a footprint to a park

Gierliński studied the Bałtów rocks at the suggestion of Prof. Zbigniew Kotański. In the same year, 2001, tracks of a stegosaur and of the small predator Compsognathus were also found, confirming that dinosaurs had walked along a Jurassic beach here. The Devil's Footprint was first interpreted as an Allosaurus track; according to the park, in the early 2020s it was reinterpreted as most likely belonging to an early tyrannosauroid, a Jurassic relative of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex.

Local associations Delta and "Bałt" seized on the finds. The original plan was to place models where the tracks had been found, but in the end a separate Bałtów Jurassic Park was built – today's JuraPark Bałtów. In 2024 the park received the Gold Certificate of the Polish Tourism Organisation. Since December 2017 the whole Bałtów Tourist Complex has been owned by the company DLF Invest.

What to see

• Educational trail – according to the park, nearly a kilometre long with more than 100 life-size dinosaur models, arranged by geological period. The models were made by palaeoartists working with the park, including Marta Szubert and Tomasz Okręglicki.
• Jurassic Museum – at the end of the trail. It holds dinosaur bones, teeth and footprints, remains of marine reptiles, shark teeth, trilobites and ammonites, brought from Poland, Lebanon, Morocco and Madagascar.
• PaleoCamp – real dinosaur bones from Morocco and palaeontology workshops where you can hunt for fossil sea urchins, corals and crinoids.
• Prehistoric Oceanarium – a big-screen show about prehistoric marine reptiles and fish. In October 2026 the park's website listed it as closed for redevelopment.

Interesting facts

In the Late Jurassic, Bałtów lay on a seashore – which is why the tracks survive in rocks of marine origin, a detail that had already intrigued Prof. Kotański. The success of Bałtów led the Delta association to open further parks in Solec Kujawski and in Krasiejów near Opole, and even a site in the US state of Utah. 300,000 people visited the Bałtów park in 2014.

Tripto tip

JuraPark itself (the dinosaur trail, Jurassic Museum and Adventure Planet) is sold as a separate package; according to the park's price list, a ticket at the gate costs PLN 65 (reduced PLN 57), and online it can be cheaper. From Monday to Wednesday there is a cheaper walking ticket that also covers the Bałtów safari park. Allow 1.5–2 hours for the trail and museum, and a full day for the whole complex. Opening hours vary through the year (in October the park was usually open 10:00–17:00), so check the calendar on juraparkbaltow.pl before you go. The other attractions are covered on our Bałtów Tourist Complex page.