Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Opole
The Franciscan Church in Opole, officially the Church of the Holy Trinity, is the burial place of the medieval Piast dukes of Opole and one of the most precious historic buildings in the city. Its St. Anne's Chapel, known as the Piast Chap…
Churches & monasteries
Olesno
The pine trunk behind glass by the high altar bears a plaque dated "July 1444": under this tree, legend says, a girl was saved from robbers through the intercession of St Anne. A wooden church grew up around the pine, and in the 17th centu…
Churches & monasteries
Praszka
In Wierzbie, a village in the Praszka municipality on national road 45 between Wieluń and Opole, stands a wooden church whose log structure is dated to around 1522. It is a late Gothic church of the Wieluń type – a reminder that this north…
Churches & monasteries
Pawłowiczki
In the fields outside Gościęcin, next to a spring long believed to cure eye ailments, stands the wooden pilgrimage church of St Brice, built in 1661. Locals simply call the area with the church, the former hermitage and the chapels Bryksy.…
Churches & monasteries
Baborów
The weathervane on the turret is cut with the date "1700" – the year building began. The wooden cemetery church of St Joseph in Baborów (listed in some heritage registers as the church of St Joseph and St Barbara) was built in 1700–1702 on…
Landmarks
Opole
A green, openwork footbridge over the Młynówka is one of the best-known sights in Opole. Locals call it the Green Bridge or the Lovers' Bridge, but its official name – Most Groszowy, the Penny Bridge – recalls the days when crossing it cos…
Cities & towns
Opole
Opole Venice (Opolska Wenecja, roughly "oh-POL-skah veh-NETS-yah") is the most photographed spot in Opole, southwestern Poland: a row of colorful townhouses rising straight out of the Młynówka channel and reflected in its still water. It i…
Landscape parks
Góra Świętej Anny
Góra Świętej Anny (St Anne's Mountain) Landscape Park protects 5,051 ha of the Chełm Ridge, the westernmost part of the Silesian Upland, which rises above the flat Opole Plain. It is one of the smaller landscape parks in Poland, yet it hol…
Landscape parks
Pokrzywna
Opawskie Mountains Landscape Park (Park Krajobrazowy Góry Opawskie, roughly "PAHRK krah-yo-brah-ZOH-vee GOO-ry oh-PAHV-skee-eh") is the Polish part of the Eastern Sudetes between the towns of Prudnik and Głuchołazy, right on the Czech bord…
Gardens
Pokój
The historic park in Pokój (pronounced "POH-kooy", meaning "peace") is a former ducal palace garden in the Opole region of southern Poland and one of the most remarkable landscape gardens in Silesia. It is all that remains of Carlsruhe, th…
Gardens
Strzelce Opolskie
Count Andrzej Maria Renard was so taken with English landscape gardens that he sent his gardener to London to study them. The result can still be seen in Strzelce Opolskie: a historic landscape park of roughly 62–65 ha (sources differ), wi…
Landmarks
Nysa
A few steps from Nysa's market square, at the start of Wrocławska Street, stands a well regarded as a masterpiece of Baroque wrought ironwork. The Beautiful Well of 1686 has a forged casing more than 5 metres high, crowned by the gilded do…
Monuments & mounds
Góra Świętej Anny
The Monument to the Silesian Insurgents on St. Anne's Mountain (Góra Świętej Anny, roughly "GOO-ra SHVYEN-tey AH-nee") is a massive granite memorial by sculptor Xawery Dunikowski, unveiled in 1955 above a former quarry turned giant amphith…
Old towns & squares
Kluczbork
The relief in the tympanum on the west wall of the town hall shows a square that no longer exists: the town hall surrounded by twelve small houses known as the "Twelve Apostles". A fire in 1925 destroyed eight of them; the two survivors st…
Old towns & squares
Namysłów
Every day around midday a fanfare for three trumpets sounds from the tower of Namysłów town hall. Built in 1374–1378, with a 57-metre tower, the town hall stands in the middle of the square of the town where a peace treaty ending a Polish–…
Old towns & squares
Opole
Opole Market Square (Rynek, pronounced "RIH-nek") with its Town Hall is the historic heart of Opole, the capital of the Opole region in southern Poland, and the natural place to start any visit. The square keeps its medieval rectangular pl…
Old towns & squares
Krapkowice
In 1806 the house at number 4 on Krapkowice's market square was home to Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon's younger brother, who was then commanding a French corps in Silesia. It is the oldest surviving house on the square and the best starting p…
Old towns & squares
Niemodlin
The market square in Niemodlin is neither square nor rectangular – it is spindle-shaped, widening in the middle and narrowing at both ends. Its sides are lined with town houses mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, and a Gothic church a…
Old towns & squares
Nysa
Nysa Market Square is a medieval market place measuring about 200 × 100 m and for centuries the heart of the capital of a bishops' duchy. The war destroyed most of its buildings, but some gems survived: the Renaissance Town Weigh House, a…
Old towns & squares
Prudnik
Prudnik's rectangular market square was laid out using the "Flemish rope", a medieval unit of measurement – which is why the square covers exactly one morgen (an old land measure). In the middle stands the town hall with a 63-metre tower,…
Nature
gmina Lubsza
The Oder has not always flowed where it does today. The traces of its old bends are oxbow lakes – crescent-shaped ponds on the valley floor, which the managers of Stobrawa Landscape Park count among its most valuable natural sites. On thei…
Historic sites
Nysa
A shell on a blue background and a yellow arrow point the way from Nysa to Santiago de Compostela – the apostle's tomb is a very long way off, but every stretch of the Way of St James belongs to the same European network. Through Nysa runs…
Viewpoints
Baborów
On the edge of Baborów, on ul. Wiejska, stands a small observation tower opened in September 2019. Its deck looks out over the farmland of the Głubczyce Plateau, with fields, clumps of trees and the surrounding villages. It's a short, free…
Nature
Opole
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…