On Castle Square in Prudnik stands a thick, round stone tower that is older than the town itself. This is Wok's Tower — the only remnant of the medieval castle of Wogendrossel, regarded as the oldest castle tower in Upper Silesia and the o…
North of Opole, in the forests along the Stobrawa and Oder rivers, lie dunes you would hardly expect here: sandy hills up to 20 metres high, covered in pine forest. They are one of the most striking landscapes of the Stobrawa Landscape Par…
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…
University Hill, known to locals as the Górka ("the little hill"), is the highest point of Opole's old town – 165 m above sea level, a few steps from the market square. In the Middle Ages lime was burned here; for five centuries it was hom…
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…
On a hill above the small town of Ujazd in Opole Province stand brick walls that changed with their owners for eight centuries: from the stone tower of the Bishops of Wrocław, through a Renaissance palace, to the seat of the Hohenlohe prin…
Dąbrowa Castle (roughly "dom-BRO-vah") is a 17th-century Renaissance residence near Opole in southern Poland, remodeled in the 1890s into a Neo-Renaissance mansion and famous for its spiral, twisted brick chimneys. It stands in a large his…
On a low hill above the Ścinawa Niemodlińska valley, at the north-western edge of Korfantów, stands the late Renaissance castle of what was once Friedland. From a distance you see a square tower and three wings arranged in a horseshoe; up…
Where the Osobłoga flows into the Oder stands a four-winged residence whose history reads like a catalogue of Silesian plot twists. Krapkowice Castle was bought in 1582 for 1,600 thalers, rebuilt as a grand seat of the von Redern family, b…
Rogów Opolski Castle, near Krapkowice, is a Renaissance and Neoclassical residence set in a 19th-century landscape park. Since 1965 it has belonged to the Provincial Public Library in Opole, which keeps its most valuable collections here:…
The newest attraction around Kluczbork is only a little over ten years old. The reservoir on the Stobrawa river opened on 2 October 2012, and by the following summer it already had a bathing area. Today the lake at Ligota Górna is the town…