Piaskowa Góra viewpoint near Wapnica

From Piaskowa Góra you look down on water whose colour is unlike anything else on Wolin Island: Turquoise Lake owes its hue to a white chalk bed. The hill is only 53.3 m above sea level, and the viewpoint itself sits at about 35–40 m, but the slope drops steeply straight to the lake. It is one of the most visited spots in Wolin National Park.

History: a hill eaten by a quarry

The northern part of the hill was formed by a huge slab of chalk — a glacial erratic torn by the ice sheet from the floor of today's Baltic and carried many kilometres south. In the mid-19th century a chalk quarry opened at its foot to supply Johannes Quistorp's cement works in nearby Lubin, founded in 1855. The pit consumed much of the hill and went more than ten metres below sea level.

In March 1945 the cement works stopped, and Soviet troops removed the machinery as war booty. Poland resumed extraction in 1948 and ended it in 1954. The pit then slowly filled with water; around 1960 its level matched that of the Szczecin Lagoon.

What to see

• Turquoise Lake — 6.74 ha in area and 21.2 m deep. The surface lies at 2.6 m above sea level, so the bottom is 18.6 m below sea level — a cryptodepression.
• The panorama from the viewpoint: the lake, Wapnica village, Lake Wicko Małe, the Trzciągowska Valley and the wooded hills of the Wolin Range with Wyżnica.
• Pomeranian beech forest — the hill is covered with woodland dominated by beech and sessile oak.

Did you know?

The turquoise colour comes from light scattering in clear water and reflecting off the white chalk bottom. Nearby grows the roughly 400-year-old oak “Prastary”, a protected natural monument damaged by vandals in 2015. A few kilometres away, on Zielonka hill in Lubin, is a viewpoint from which the Świna backward delta, the Szczecin Lagoon and the Baltic Sea are all visible at once.

Tripto tips

The best starting point is the car park by Turquoise Lake in Wapnica, about 5.5 km south of Międzyzdroje. The blue trail runs along the lake's eastern shore below the summit of Piaskowa Góra and on to Lubin, while a green path circles the hill and the lake. The blue trail continues to Lubin and the Zielonka viewpoint. By the car park the national park has set up information boards, maps, shelters and benches. The water looks its best on a sunny day before noon.