Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Mountains & peaks
Żabnica
Hala Boracza is a grassy saddle at around 860 m in the Żywiec Beskids, above the villages of Żabnica and Milówka – and on it stands a PTTK mountain hut with a history unlike any other in these mountains. It was built by the Jewish sports c…
Nature
Tarnowskie Góry
The Friedrich Mine washing tip in Tarnowskie Góry (Hałda popłuczkowa, pronounced roughly "TAR-nov-skyeh GOO-ri") is a flat-topped, orange mound of mining waste that has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2017. It is the leftov…
Other
Katowice
Jarmark na Nikiszu is a December craft market on Plac Wyzwolenia in Nikiszowiec, a historic mining estate in Katowice. It has been held since 2008 on the first weekend after Barbórka, the miners' feast of St Barbara, and draws on that trad…
Other
Katowice
The Katowice Christmas Market (Jarmark Bożonarodzeniowy, roughly "YAR-mark bo-zho-na-ro-dze-NYO-vih") transforms the Main Square of Katowice, the capital of Poland's Silesia region, into a glowing winter village of wooden stalls, Ferris wh…
Other
Żarki
Żarki in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland has one of the liveliest markets in the region. The town hall calls it an "open-air supermarket": every Saturday up to 10,000 customers come here, choosing from around 500 stalls on a 1.5-hectare squa…
Nature
Olsztyn
Behind a low opening in a limestone rock, right beside the red Eagles' Nests Trail, lies a chamber of about 10 × 8 m filled with thick flowstone columns up to 1.5 m tall. According to cavers' descriptions, no other cave in the Polish Jura…
Lakes
Olsztyn
The small lake in Kusięta, in the Olsztyn municipality near Częstochowa, looks like an ordinary pond among meadows, but it is a geological rarity. It is the largest of a group of ponds that survive in karst sinkholes thanks to a layer of c…
Lakes
Świerklaniec
As late as the 1960s, excavators were at work here, digging sand used to backfill underground coal mine workings. Today Nakło-Chechło Lake (officially Jezioro Chechło-Nakło) is a body of water of about 90 hectares surrounded by pine forest…
Lakes
Niewiesze
Lake Pławniowice was not created by leisure planners – it exists because water kept flooding a sand quarry. The pit, which supplied backfill sand for Silesian coal mines, was flooded in the 1970s, and today it is a favourite spot for peopl…
Lakes
Siewierz
Beneath the surface of Przeczyce Reservoir lies the flooded valley of the Czarna Przemsza river, along with remains of field fortifications from the 1930s and the Second World War. The reservoir was created in 1963, when a dam blocked the…
Nature
Ogrodzieniec
The pale walls of the former quarry of the "Wiek" cement works expose the bed of a Jurassic sea from about 155–160 million years ago – complete with ammonites, belemnites and brachiopods. The pit between Bzów and Ogrodzieniec Castle attrac…
Nature
Olsztyn
The Olsztyn municipality calls this place an "open book of geology", and it is hard to argue. The disused quarry on Kielniki hill, about 1 km south-east of the castle ruins in Olsztyn near Częstochowa, lays bare the inside of a Jurassic hi…
Nature
Bobrowniki
The disused quarry in Rogoźnik, in the Bobrowniki municipality (Będzin County), is for those who prefer wild, overgrown workings to polished attractions. The village lies in a small basin between the Buczyna and Sadowie hills, and the surr…
Nature
Kozy
The wall of the old quarry in Kozy shows how layers of sandstone and shale – black, green and bluish-grey – settled on the sea floor over millions of years. For more than 80 years stone for roads and railways was extracted here; today the…
Nature
Janów
Pale rock walls in the middle of a Jura forest look like a western film set – and a western was indeed shot here. But the name of the Warsaw Quarry (Kamieniołom Warszawski) in Siedlec comes from something else: the limestone cut here, rega…
Waterfalls
Wisła
The Rodło Cascades (Kaskady Rodła, roughly "kas-KAH-dee ROD-wah") are a chain of about 25 natural waterfalls and rock steps in the Biała Wisełka valley above the mountain resort of Wisła, in southern Poland's Silesian Beskids. The two bigg…
Nature
Piekary Śląskie
Kocie Górki is a hilly, birch-covered area on the border of Piekary Śląskie and Radzionków – one of the town's most valuable natural sites, alongside Żabie Doły, Winna Góra and Księża Góra. Different habitats sit side by side in a small sp…
Museums
Miasteczko Śląskie
At around 2 p.m. on 17 June 1917, a roar echoed through the Bibiela mine and a torrent of water burst into the workings. The miners managed to escape, but within two hours the entire mine – machinery and equipment included – was under wate…
Monuments & mounds
Piekary Śląskie
The Liberation Mound is the highest point of Piekary Śląskie and one of the key monuments of interwar Upper Silesia. It was raised over five years, in 1932–1937, to mark the 250th anniversary of King John III Sobieski's march to Vienna and…
Churches & monasteries
Boronów
On the grille of a side chapel hangs a crucifix that, people in Boronów say, is slowly closing its eyes – and will shut them completely on the day the world ends. The Church of Our Lady Queen of the Holy Rosary in Boronów is a wooden churc…
Churches & monasteries
Pietrowice Wielkie
On the edge of Pietrowice Wielkie, on the road to Gródczanki, a small wooden church of the Holy Cross sits at the bottom of a ravine. It has drawn pilgrims for more than three centuries, and right beside it a spring rises in a Gothic Reviv…
Churches & monasteries
Wilamowice
On a cemetery hill in Stara Wieś near Wilamowice stands a wooden church whose construction date, 1522, has been confirmed by tree-ring dating. Shingled roofs, covered walkways around the walls and late Gothic portals with "donkey-back" arc…
Churches & monasteries
Ustroń
On the northern edge of Ustroń, in the Nierodzim district, a dark, shingle-clad church dedicated to St Anne stands among old trees and gravestones. In summer it is easy to miss, yet it is the oldest church in Ustroń. The present building i…
Viewpoints
Wisła
On the slope of Kobyla, a few metres from a hiking trail, the hillside suddenly drops away and a rocky pulpit rises up with jagged, partly overhanging walls. Krzakoska Rock – also known as the Kobyla Rocks – is the best-known climbing crag…