Lapidarium in Podlesice

Before you head in among the white rocks of Góra Zborów, you can spend a few minutes seeing what the whole Jura is made of. The Lapidarium in Podlesice is an open-air display of the typical rocks of the Kraków-Wieluń Upland, from Jurassic limestones formed about 163–157 million years ago to a granite boulder that travelled here with a glacier from Scandinavia. Every block has an information board.

Where the collection comes from

The Lapidarium stands next to the Centre for the Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Jura in Podlesice, right below the Głęboka Cave and Góra Zborów hill. The centre includes a tourist information point, exhibitions on palaeontological and archaeological research, and the ticket office for the nature reserve and the cave.

What you will see

• Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian) limestones – the core of the display. They formed in a relatively shallow sea about 163–157 million years ago and gave the Jura its name. Across the region they form a layer more than 250 m thick.
• Two blocks shaped by karst – the holes, tunnels and hollows are a miniature version of the processes that carved the area's limestone outcrops.
• Rocks older than the Upper Jurassic – a block of Devonian dolomite, a Permian igneous rock, siderite concretions and Middle Jurassic sandy limestones. At the surface they appear only in patches along the edges of the upland.
• A granite erratic boulder – carried onto the upland during the Pleistocene by glaciers from Scandinavia.

Good to know

The Jurassic limestones run in a belt from near Kraków through Częstochowa to Wieluń, which is why the region is called the Kraków-Częstochowa or Kraków-Wieluń Jura. On Góra Zborów itself, a limestone quarry operated during the Second World War and calcite was mined in the caves – this mining partly damaged the hill's caves and rocks.

Tripto tip

The Lapidarium takes 15–20 minutes – treat it as a geology primer for your outing. Then follow the nature trail through the Góra Zborów reserve or visit the Głęboka Cave, the only show cave in the northern part of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland (190 m long). Tickets for the reserve and cave are sold at the centre's ticket office. Parking at the centre is free. Bobolice Castle and the Okiennik Wielki rock are about 5 km away, and Ogrodzieniec Castle is just under 14 km.