491 attractions in Silesia, including Katowice Railway Station, Dziewięćsił Festival of the Beskids and Cieszyn Silesia and Egzotarium in Sosnowiec.
Technical monuments
Katowice
In front of Katowice station stand 16 reinforced-concrete "chalices" – columns that flare upwards like concrete flowers. They echo the famous Brutalist station of 1972, demolished in 2010–2011 despite protests from architects. Today's stat…
Other
Szczyrk
The Dziewięćsił Festival is a spread-out celebration of two regions – the Beskids and Cieszyn Silesia – held simultaneously in nine towns and villages. Each location has its own programme: concerts, workshops, outdoor games, meetings and l…
Zoos
Sosnowiec
The Egzotarium in Sosnowiec (pronounced roughly "sos-NO-vyets") is a combined zoo and botanical garden housed in a striking glass building in southern Poland. Officially the Ecological Education Center – Egzotarium, it brings together aqua…
Other
Żarki
EtnoJura is a series of craft workshops run by Etno Pracownia in Żarki on the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland – on the studio's website the workshop gallery is titled "Warsztaty EtnoJury". Participants work with hay, wicker, wood and leather and…
Other
Racibórz
The Upper Oder Festival is a three-day summer celebration of the Upper Oder Land – the western part of the Silesian Voivodeship – spread over dozens of places along the river and in nearby towns. In 2025 it drew 200,669 visitors, with a pr…
Landmarks
Siewierz
"From Siewierz came a cart, carrying painted maidens" – almost everyone in Poland knows this song from the repertoire of the Śląsk Song and Dance Ensemble. In Siewierz you can actually see the maidens: two bronze figures of dancing girls i…
Museums
Gliwice
Funzeum – Children's Imagination Centre fills 4,000 m² in the Europa Centralna shopping centre in Gliwice. Despite the name, nobody looks at anything through glass here – the motto translates as "You don't tour it. You do it." Children bui…
Technical monuments
Katowice
The Szyb Wilson Gallery at 1 Oswobodzenia Street in Katowice's Janów-Nikiszowiec district occupies the former miners' assembly hall and bathhouse of the Wilson shafts of the Wieczorek coal mine. It has been open since 2001, and with nearly…
Nature
gmina Niegowa
The Northern Jura Geopark is not a single spot on the map but a scattered geotourism area in the northern part of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, including the area around Olsztyn near Częstochowa. The Polish Geological Institute has publis…
Other
Jaworzno
In the walls of the former Sadowa Góra quarry in Jaworzno, quarrying exposed the bones of a nothosaur – a marine reptile from around 230 million years ago. On the quarry floor, a rippled stretch of Triassic seabed has survived, probably sh…
Landmarks
Katowice
Giszowiec (say "gee-SHOH-vyets") is a historic garden-city estate in Katowice, built in the early 1900s for coal miners and their families. Instead of tenement blocks, it has whitewashed cottages with steep red roofs, private gardens and t…
Hiking & tourist trails
Ustroń
The Main Beskid Trail (Główny Szlak Beskidzki, or GSB) is Poland's longest mountain trail: a red-blazed route of roughly 500 km (310 miles) running from Ustroń in the Silesian Beskids to Wołosate (pronounced "vo-woh-SAH-teh") in the Bieszc…
Churches & monasteries
Częstochowa
In one painting the artist himself helps Christ carry the cross; in another, Primate Wyszyński and John Paul II look on at the Passion; and the final scene is titled "Ascension to Częstochowa". The Golgotha of Jasna Góra is a cycle of 18 p…
Monuments & mounds
Będzin
Będzin's highest hill – St Dorothy's Hill, known locally as Dorotka (382 m) – has more nicknames than many a mountain: "Golden Hill", "Olympus of Zagłębie", "Jasna Góra of Zagłębie" (after Poland's most famous shrine). On the top stands a…
Nature
Woźniki
Góra Grojec (365 m) is a solitary limestone hill that stands out clearly from the fields between Psary and Lubsza in the Woźniki district of Silesia. Its name hints at an old stronghold ("gród" in Polish), and local tales – recorded among…
Historic sites
Pilica
Before the town was moved to a more convenient site in the 14th century, Pilica stood right here, on a small hill above the river now called St Peter's Hill and known as the cradle of Pilica. Some 800 years ago this was the site of the fir…
Castles
Cieszyn
Castle Hill (Góra Zamkowa) is where Cieszyn began. On a steep rise above the Olza River, right on the Czech border, stand the Romanesque Rotunda of St Nicholas and St Wenceslas – the oldest masonry building in Silesia and the image on the…
Silesian
Międzybrodzie Żywieckie
The top of Mount Żar looks nothing like it did half a century ago. In the 1970s it was levelled and turned into an artificial kite-shaped reservoir holding 2.31 million m³ of water. This is the upper reservoir of the Porąbka-Żar pumped-sto…
Technical monuments
Bytom
The Upper Silesian Narrow Gauge Railway, known locally as the "rosbanka", is a historic line with a track gauge of 785 mm that now carries tourists on a 21 km route from Bytom via Tarnowskie Góry to Miasteczko Śląskie. The network was buil…
Nature
Olsztyn
These two bare limestone hills outside Olsztyn look as if someone had stacked white bales of goods on the grass, and according to one theory that's exactly where their name comes from (towar means goods in Polish). Góry Towarne hide a cave…
Historic sites
Lelów
At ul. Ogrodowa 7 in Lelów stands the ohel of David Biderman – the tomb of the tzadik who gave his name to the Lelov Hasidic dynasty. Every year, around the turn of January and February, Hasidim from Israel and the USA come here to pray at…
Mountains & peaks
Ogrodzieniec
Wielki Grochowiec is a treeless, rocky hill rising to 486 m above sea level in Ryczów (Ogrodzieniec municipality), just north of the road to Żelazko. From its flat, cross-topped summit the view sweeps all the way around the horizon, and th…
Historic sites
Podzamcze
The Birów Hill Stronghold in Podzamcze is a timber reconstruction of a medieval fortified settlement, built on a rocky limestone hill about 1.5 km (1 mile) from Ogrodzieniec Castle in southern Poland. The palisade, towers and huts stand wh…
Mountains & peaks
Żywiec
The steel cross on the bare summit of Średni Grojec can be seen from many parts of Żywiec and has become one of the town's symbols. Fewer people know that the higher, wooded top of the same hill once held a castle of robber knights, and la…