Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Hidden gemPalaces
Żywiec
Paintings by Wojciech Kossak and Julian Fałat hung on the walls, the fireplaces came from Italy and the bathroom fittings from England. The Habsburg Palace in Żywiec, also known as the New Castle, was for half a century the main residence…
Hidden gemMountains & peaks
Brenna
The name has nothing to do with the shape of the mountain. On its western summit the boundaries of three communities meet – Wisła, Ustroń and Brenna – and the shepherds and settlers of old marked them with mounds of piled stones ("kopce").…
Hidden gemViewpoints
Cieszyn
Of the four towers that once defended the castle of the Dukes of Cieszyn, only one survives. Climb the 120 steps of the Piast Tower and you reach a terrace overlooking two towns on either side of the Olza River — Polish Cieszyn and Czech Č…
Hidden gemCastles
Chudów
The ruin at Chudów looks like a romantic relic of war, but much of it is the product of 19th-century fashion: after a fire in 1875 the owner had only part of the walls secured and the rest pulled down to create a "picturesque ruin". Today…
Hidden gemCastles
Tarnowskie Góry
For decades under communism, the Renaissance castle of the Wrochem family in Tarnowice Stare served as the headquarters of a state farm and decayed so badly that the town struggled for years to find a buyer. In 2000 it was bought by Krysty…
Churches & monasteries
Katowice
Panewniki Basilica – officially the Basilica of St. Louis the King and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – is a Neo-Romanesque Franciscan church in Katowice, southern Poland, best known for one of the largest moving nativity scenes…
Mountains & peaks
Brenna
People climb Błatnia (917 m) for the meadow and the view: from the grassy mound on the summit you can see almost the entire Silesian Beskids, from Klimczok and Skrzyczne to Barania Góra, and on clear days even the peaks of the Malá Fatra i…
Landmarks
Bytom
Locals call it Bytom's Powązki, after Warsaw's famous historic cemetery, and the comparison fits: beneath old trees lie a mayor who ran the town for 37 years, a priest who fought for the Polish language in Upper Silesia, Bytom's best-known…
Mountains & peaks
Łodygowice
Until the 1970s hikers climbed Czupel without knowing they were standing on the roof of the Little Beskids (Beskid Mały) – at the time, Łamana Skała was thought to be the highest peak of the range. Only accurate surveys gave Czupel first p…
Churches & monasteries
Zamarski
First there was only the tower: for almost a century and a half the faithful prayed in an open space beneath a belfry, because there simply was no church. The wooden tower of St Roch's Church in Zamarski, rebuilt around 1585, is according…
Mountains & peaks
Międzybrodzie Bialskie
Hrobacza Łąka (roughly "hro-BAH-chah WON-kah"; officially spelled Chrobacza Łąka) is an 828 m (2,717 ft) summit in the Little Beskids (Beskid Mały) of southern Poland. It is one of the easiest rewarding hikes near Bielsko-Biała. A 35-meter…
Lakes
Wisła
In Wisła Czarne the Biała and Czarna Wisełka, the two streams that form the Vistula, meet, and it is right here that an earth dam holds back their waters. Lake Czerniańskie, also called the Czerniański Reservoir, is a mountain drinking-wat…
Lakes
Rzeczyce
Dzierżno Duże is not a natural lake but a flooded sand pit: in 1964 the waters of the Kłodnica river were let into two quarry pits up to 20 m deep. The result is one of the largest reservoirs in Upper Silesia, about 5.8 km long and coverin…
Churches & monasteries
Racibórz
The Castle Chapel of St. Thomas Becket in Racibórz (rah-CHEE-boosh) is the Gothic jewel of the town's Piast Castle, often called the "pearl of Silesian Gothic" and the "Silesian Sainte-Chapelle." Built in the late 13th century and dedicate…
Churches & monasteries
Rudy
The coat of arms of Rudy Abbey bore the letters MORS, Latin for "death", but they meant something else: Morimond, the French abbey from which the local Cistercians descended. For over 550 years the monks founded villages, fishponds, brewer…
Technical monuments
Chorzów
The Elka Cable Car (Kolej Linowa "Elka") in Chorzów is a gondola-and-chairlift line gliding over Silesian Park, one of Europe's largest urban parks, in the heart of the Katowice metropolitan area. It links Silesian Stadium, the Legendia am…
Churches & monasteries
Racibórz
The Dominican friary that stood beside Racibórz's market square for almost six centuries is gone; only its church survives. St James's Church, in the north-eastern corner of the square, burned at least four times, yet it kept its medieval…
Mountains & peaks
Szczyrk
Set into an altar on the slopes of Kotarz are stones from Jerusalem, the Sahara and Australia, and even fragments of meteorites. Kotarz (974 m) is a wooded peak above Szczyrk and Brenna in the Silesian Beskids, the highest point of the rid…
Mountains & peaks
Bielsko-Biała
In the mid-20th century Europe's longest natural toboggan run – 2,200 metres with 30 bends – wound down the slopes of this mountain. Kozia Góra (683 m), which locals in Bielsko-Biała simply call Stefanka, is a wooded peak within the city l…
Mountains & peaks
Wilkowice
The stone mountain hut on Magurka Wilkowicka is the third building on this spot – the two earlier wooden ones burned down within less than ten years. This peak in the Little Beskids (909 m, the fourth highest in the range) has been a favou…
Mountains & peaks
Wisła
Old folk tales say that deep inside this mountain there is a chamber where a rabbit of solid gold sits at a table. Malinów (1,115 m) is a broad, flat summit in the Silesian Beskids, on the boundary between the resort towns of Wisła and Szc…
Palaces
Krzyżanowice
Franz Liszt lived and composed in this palace in 1843–1848, and before him Ludwig van Beethoven visited his friend and patron, Prince Karl Lichnowsky. Krzyżanowice Palace, near Racibórz in Upper Silesia, is a neo-Gothic residence with octa…
Palaces
Włodowice
In July 1683, on his way to the relief of Vienna, King John III Sobieski stopped here. Today all that remains of Włodowice Palace on Krakowska Street is a burnt-out shell with a Baroque gable – the ruin of a residence built in 1669–1681 fo…
Other
Żywiec
Żywiec's Castle Park covers 26 hectares of historic greenery around the Old Castle and the Habsburg palace, a few minutes' walk from the Market Square. More than 5,000 old trees grow here, and by the canal stands the 18th-century Chinese H…