Viewing Gallery on Święty Krzyż (Łysa Góra)

The quartzite sandstone blocks below the viewing gallery on Łysa Góra formed more than 500 million years ago and are among the oldest rocks exposed at the surface anywhere in Poland. The platform – officially the "Viewing Gallery on the Stone Run" – lets you see the most famous gołoborze (block field) of the Holy Cross Mountains up close without stepping onto the fragile rubble. It stands on the summit of Łysa Góra (also called Łysiec or Święty Krzyż – Holy Cross, about 595 m) in Świętokrzyski National Park, and according to the park's director it receives up to 200,000 visitors a year.

Why the gallery was built

In the past, to open the block field to tourists, boulders were pushed aside, part of a pre-Christian ritual rampart was destroyed and makeshift steps were laid from loose stones. Walking over the wobbly blocks harmed the plants and animals living there and was dangerous. In 2003 the park commissioned architect Mirosław Holewiński to design a plan to protect and restore the damaged ecosystem; today visitors view the upper part of the block field from metal stairs and a terrace. In 2025 the park received a grant to modernise the gallery, including an electric stair lift for people with disabilities.

The block field beneath your feet

The Łysa Góra block field is named after the botanist Professor Roman Kobendza and covers 3.84 hectares – the largest in the Holy Cross Mountains and one of the largest in the uplands of Central Europe. The blocks were split by frost in the Pleistocene, during the last glaciation, roughly 74,000–8,500 years ago. These block fields are fossil landforms: they no longer form and are very slowly being overgrown. The first tree to colonise their edges is the rowan, giving rise to a unique woodland community found only here. Among the boulders live snails such as the alpine whorl snail, and 75 species of oribatid mites have been recorded on the block fields alone.

Nearby

From the gallery you can also see part of the ritual rampart from the 7th–11th centuries that rings the summit. A few minutes away is the former Benedictine monastery of Święty Krzyż, now run by the Missionary Oblates, which keeps relics of the True Cross, and a broadcasting centre with a 157-metre mast.

Tripto tip

Entry to Świętokrzyski National Park is charged all year (PLN 11 standard, PLN 5.50 reduced), and a separate fee applies for the viewing gallery; discounted packages cover both. Tickets can be bought online or at the park's ticket points. Trails lead up Łysa Góra from Nowa Słupia among other places; the gallery itself takes 20–30 minutes, about two hours with the monastery. Note that the exhibition of the national park's Natural History Museum on Święty Krzyż is currently closed.