Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemCastles
Zawiercie
No road led to the upper castle: you climbed a system of walkways and ladders fixed to the rock. The ruins of Bąkowiec Castle stand on a limestone crag called Tygrys ("Tiger") in Skarżyce, a district of Zawiercie, and have been linked with…
Hidden gemCastles
Siewierz
"Beat, steal, kill – but steer clear of Siewierz": this old Polish saying comes from the harsh court that sat in this castle. For almost 350 years the ruins on the Czarna Przemsza river were the capital of an unusual mini-state, the Duchy…
Hidden gemCastles
Toszek
Above the entrance to Toszek Castle you can still read the Latin inscription CASPAR COMES COLONNA 1666, the last project of a count who died that same year. The castle on a limestone hill above the town has been a wooden stronghold, a seat…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Żywiec
According to the 18th-century chronicler Andrzej Komoniecki, the Renaissance tower of Żywiec's parish church was taller than the towers of St Mary's Basilica in Kraków. Today it stands 60 metres high, and since 2019 visitors can climb to i…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Koniaków
Rain falling on Ochodzita can end up in three different rivers: the Soła and the Vistula, the Olza and the Oder, or via the Váh in the Danube. This treeless, dome-shaped hill, 895 metres high, rises above the village of Koniaków right on t…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Bielsko-Biała
Szyndzielnia takes its name from the local dialect word szyndzioł, meaning a wooden roof shingle: villagers from Kamienica and Olszówka made shingles for the town of Bielsko from timber felled on its slopes. Today you ride up the mountain…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Soblówka
Wielka Rycerzowa (1,226 m) is a border peak in a remote corner of the Żywiec Beskids, where water running off one slope ends up in the Baltic and off the other in the Black Sea. The summit itself is partly wooded, but right next to it lies…
Hidden gemCastles
Racibórz
Piast Castle in Racibórz was the seat of the dukes of Racibórz and Opole-Racibórz and is one of the oldest castles in Upper Silesia, standing on the Oder right next to the old town. After a thorough restoration it houses a museum with exhi…
Hidden gemZoos
Chorzów
In the 1950s one of Poland's largest zoos grew up on former mining wasteland between Chorzów and Katowice. The Silesian Zoological Garden covers about 47.5 ha of the Silesian Park, and for half a century its trademark has been a rocky holl…
Hidden gemChurches & monasteries
Piekary Śląskie
In 1680 Emperor Leopold I asked for the image of Our Lady of Piekary to be brought to plague-stricken Prague, where it was carried in procession through the streets. Three years later King John III Sobieski prayed before it on his way to t…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Wisła
Cieślar is the most common surname in Wisła: as early as 1621, just after the village was founded, four Cieślar families lived here. They gave their name to this grassy summit on the Czech border, about 920 m above sea level (sources give…
Hidden gemGardens
Rudy
The ponds, dykes, forests and road layout around Rudy are largely the work of monks who arrived here in 1258. The Cistercian Landscape Compositions of Rudy Wielkie Landscape Park protects not only nature but also a landscape designed by Ci…
Hidden gemLakes
Międzybrodzie Bialskie
Lake Międzybrodzie fills the gorge of the River Soła through the Little Beskids and looks rather like a mountain fjord: narrow, about 5 km long and squeezed between wooded slopes. It was created in 1937 behind the Porąbka Dam, co-designed…
Hidden gemPalaces
Wisła
In the night before Christmas Eve 1927, the Habsburgs' freshly renovated hunting lodge in Wisła, intended as a residence for the President of Poland, burned down in unexplained circumstances. In its place Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz designed a mo…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Istebna
At Kubalonka Pass (761 m) the road from Wisła to Istebna crosses the Main Beskid Trail, and right next to it stands a wooden church that came to the mountains from the lowlands near Gliwice. The pass separates the Stożek–Czantoria range fr…
Hidden gemOld towns & squares
Częstochowa
For centuries Częstochowa was two towns, Old and New Częstochowa, and each had its own town hall. The Neoclassical building on Plac Biegańskiego was built for the merged town, halfway between the two former market squares. Today it houses…
Hidden gemMuseums
Chorzów
In the middle of Poland's most industrialised region, a few minutes from the Silesian Stadium, stand log cottages from Istebna, octagonal barns from Kobiór, windmills and a wooden church from 1791. The Upper Silesian Ethnographic Park in C…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Wisła
Soszów Wielki (885 m, Velký Sošov in Czech) is a border peak in the Stożek–Czantoria ridge where you can stand with one foot in Poland and the other in the Czech Republic. The Main Beskid Trail runs over the summit, and the clearing at the…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Tarnowskie Góry
The Black Trout Adit in Tarnowskie Góry (Sztolnia Czarnego Pstrąga, roughly SHTOL-nya CHAR-neh-go PSTRON-ga) is a 600-meter stretch of a 19th-century drainage tunnel that visitors explore by boat, deep underground. It formed part of the sy…
Hidden gemCastles
gmina Pilica
The tower of Smoleń Castle rises so clearly above the beech canopy that it has served as a landmark in this part of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland for centuries. This is Pilcza, the family seat of the Pilecki clan, which produced Elżbieta G…
Hidden gemCastles
Chałupki
Chałupki Castle once guarded a ford on the Oder, and after the Silesian Wars of 1742 a new border separated it from the town it took its name from: the palace stayed in Prussia, while Bohumín remained with the Habsburgs. It still stands ju…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Wisła
In the Beskids the word "czupel" means a mountain with a distinct, pointed top, although this Czupel above Wisła is broad and massive rather than sharp. It rises to 882 m above sea level and about 400 metres above the valleys of Nowa Osada…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
gmina Kroczyce
According to local legend, witches from the surrounding villages gathered on this hill before flying off on their broomsticks to the witches' sabbath on Łysa Góra – hence the name Góra Zborów, roughly "Gathering Hill". Today it draws climb…
Hidden gemMuseums
Radzionków
The collection includes so-called bread money – currency that, in times of crisis, could only be used to buy bread. It is one of hundreds of curiosities gathered by a single enthusiast. The Bread Museum in Radzionków (today the Museum of B…