Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Klimontów
On the chancel arch of St Hyacinth's Church in Klimontów, the builders left a kind of signature: a mason's mark with the names of Gaspare and Sebastiano Fodiga and the date 1619 (or 1618). Thanks to traces like this, uncovered during conse…
Churches & monasteries
Pińczów
The church on Pińczów's market square is the burial place of Jan Łaski (John à Lasco) – Poland's greatest Reformation figure, who organised Protestant congregations in England and East Frisia. That is the paradox of this building: built fo…
Churches & monasteries
Świniary
The Peter's Pence register of 1326 contains the entry "Nicolaus, plebanus ecclesie de Swiniar" – the oldest written mention of the parish of Świniary. Today's wooden Church of St Stanislaus the Bishop stands in this village in the Ponidzie…
Churches & monasteries
Wiślica
St. Stanislaus Church in Nowy Korczyn is a 13th-century Gothic church founded in 1257 by Duke Bolesław the Chaste and his wife Kinga, later canonized as St. Kinga. It stands in a small town in the Ponidzie region of southern Poland, near t…
Churches & monasteries
Nowy Korczyn
The façade of the parish church in Nowy Korczyn reads like a book in stone: a three-tier gable with statues of saints, a relief of the Virgin and the coats of arms of the town, Kraków and a bishop. Poland's National Heritage Board (NID) ca…
Churches & monasteries
Wiślica
The August church fair held in front of this church made it into a song – the folk band Wolna Grupa Bukowina immortalised it in "Nuta z Ponidzia". The Church of St Lawrence itself is older than any ballad: the stone church on the hill at G…
Churches & monasteries
Nowa Słupia
For centuries the pilgrims' road to Święty Krzyż (Holy Cross) has run through Nowa Słupia – and it was here, at the stone Church of St Lawrence, that they stopped before climbing Łysa Góra (Bald Mountain). At the entrance to the churchyard…
Churches & monasteries
Szydłów
In stone-built Szydłów, where the walls, castle and synagogue were all raised from local limestone, the parish church of St Ladislaus stands out by its colour alone: it is a brick Gothic church from the mid-14th century. It was founded by…
Churches & monasteries
Chroberz
In 1940 the parishioners of Chroberz bribed the German occupation authorities and hid a bell from 1590, which was due to share the fate of two older bells requisitioned by the Austrians in 1916. That stubbornness suits this stone church on…
Churches & monasteries
Staszów
The stone church in Kurozwęki was already standing around 1470, and from 1487 it served both the parish and the Canons Regular of the Lateran. Its greatest treasures are in the Chapel of the Five Wounds on the south side – late Renaissance…
Churches & monasteries
Nowa Słupia
Beneath the basilica of Święty Krzyż (Holy Cross), on the summit of Łysa Góra, mummified bodies of the monastery's former residents lie in open coffins. At the centre of the crypt rests a figure in a nobleman's żupan and cloak, with a mace…
Nature
Sudół
Krzemionki (pronounced ksheh-MYON-kee) is a Neolithic flint mine near Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski in central-southern Poland, where prehistoric miners dug thousands of shafts to extract a rare striped flint for axes. It is one of the best-pres…
Monuments & mounds
Busko-Zdrój
In front of the Busko Municipal Cultural Centre, on a concrete bench shaped like the neck of a guitar, sits a bronze Wojciech Belon with his instrument — the bard of the Ponidzie region and founder of the band Wolna Grupa Bukowina. A phras…
Museums
Wiślica
For half a century a shallow gypsum hollow 4.2 metres across was treated as proof that Christianity reached Wiślica almost a hundred years before the baptism of Poland's first ruler, Mieszko I, in 966. Today it is known as one of the most…
Fortifications
Szydłów
Szydłów is sometimes called the Polish Carcassonne, although its walls look nothing like the French original. They have no towers at all: just a plain stone ring with battlements that has enclosed the little town since the mid-14th century…
Museums
Oblęgorek
The Henryk Sienkiewicz Museum in Oblęgorek (say "ob-WEN-go-rek") is the fairy-tale manor house that the Polish nation gave to its most celebrated novelist in 1900. Sienkiewicz, author of Quo Vadis and winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Lite…
Technical monuments
Starachowice
A blast furnace from 1899, blown out in 1968, still towers over Starachowice, preserved together with its rail tracks, charging tower and machinery. Around it, on 8 hectares of the former ironworks, is the Jan Pazdur Museum of Nature and T…
Museums
Pińczów
The Regional Museum in Pińczów is the best starting point for exploring the Ponidzie region – and a showcase of a town whose history was shaped by the Reformation, the Polish Brethren and its Jewish community. It occupies a baroque former…
Museums
Nowa Słupia
In Nowa Słupia, at the foot of Święty Krzyż (Holy Cross Mountain), stands a museum built directly over an archaeological site: beneath its roof lie the remains of ancient bloomery furnaces dating from the 1st to the 3rd century AD. The Mie…
Museums
Kielce
A witch on a broomstick sits on the clock tower on Wolności Square in Kielce. Beneath her, in a 19th-century former market hall, is the Museum of Toys and Play – one of Poland's oldest and largest toy museums, where children play and adult…
Museums
Bieliny
At the approach to Święty Krzyż from the Bieliny side, the gate of a wooden village is guarded by three pagan deities – Świst, Poświst and Pogoda, who according to old accounts were worshipped on Łysa Góra. Behind the palisade of the Medie…
Palaces
Kielce
The Palace of the Kraków Bishops in Kielce (say "KYEL-tseh") is the finest historic building in this central Polish city and is often described as the best-preserved early Baroque palace from the first half of the 17th century anywhere in…
Palaces
Staszów
A 14th-century knights' castle that spent four centuries turning into a Baroque and Neoclassical residence, and now has more than 80 American bison as neighbours. Kurozwęki Palace, 7 km north-west of Staszów, is one of the few places in Po…
Palaces
Chroberz
In Chroberz on the Nida river stands a late neoclassical palace designed by Henryk Marconi for Margrave Aleksander Wielopolski, 13th holder of the Pińczów entail (a family estate passed down undivided). The palace and park, built in 1857–1…