Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Monuments & mounds
Chałupki
On Zabełkowska Street in Rudyszwałd, set against the wall of a roadside building, stands a short, stocky sandstone cross. It bears no name and no date, yet it is one of the oldest monuments in the village: a stone trace of medieval law, un…
Viewpoints
Radzionków
On a hill of the Tarnowskie Góry Ridge, 357 m above sea level, lies a park that Radzionków owes to the interwar years and to a man who later became governor of the Katowice province – Jerzy Ziętek. Its name, Księża Góra, means "Priests' Hi…
Nature
Żarki
Drive along regional road 792 from Żarki towards Jaworznik and you suddenly see where the Polish Jura ends. The limestone upland breaks off in a steep step, with the wide valley of the upper Warta River spread out below. This is the Jurass…
Nature
Kalety
This woodland meadow in Kalety, between the Miotek district and the town centre on Paderewskiego Street, is officially the ecological site "Purple Moor-Grass Meadow in Kalety". Locals call it the iris meadow because in June it fills with S…
Nature
Katowice
The highest point in Katowice is not a tower block or a slag heap but the beech-covered Wanda Hill (Wzgórze Wandy, about 357 m above sea level). Its slopes hold the Las Murckowski nature reserve – a patch of mixed forest that comes closer…
Monuments & mounds
Żywiec
In the castle park in Żywiec, next to the Habsburg Palace, a bronze Archduchess Alicja Habsburg sits on a marble bench – a Swede who chose Poland and served in the wartime underground under the code name "Alicja". The life-size sculpture w…
Monuments & mounds
Częstochowa
On a bronze bench on the Avenue of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Aleja NMP) sits a bearded doctor, a book and a stethoscope beside him. This is Dr Władysław Biegański (1857–1917), voted "Częstochowa's Citizen of the Century" by local residents…
Viewpoints
Wisła
Under a hundred-year-old wild cherry tree on the Cieńków ridge, one simple rule applies: anyone who sincerely embraces and kisses their loved one here will be happy in love. This "magic tree" reached the final of Poland's Tree of the Year…
Monuments & mounds
Siewierz
On the market square in Siewierz, two bespectacled gentlemen sit on a bronze bench: the composer Stanisław Hadyna and the poet Zdzisław Pyzik. They wrote the song "Od Siewierza jechał wóz" ("A Cart Was Coming from Siewierz"), performed for…
Monuments & mounds
Pszczyna
On the Market Square in Pszczyna, a few steps from the castle gate, a bronze Princess Daisy sits on a bench – leaving a free seat beside her for anyone who wants a photo. The monument was unveiled on 1 May 2009, and miniature versions of i…
Viewpoints
Zwardoń
On the summit of Kikula (845 m), right on the Polish–Slovak border above Zwardoń and the Slovak village of Skalité, stands a bench that makes any adult look like a child: it is 5.3 m long and 3 m high. The Slovaks call it Lavička lásky a r…
Nature
Żarki
By the road from Żarki to Jaworznik grows a lime tree that locals call "Babka" – "Granny". It is more than 500 years old; only about a third of its trunk is left and the wood is partly rotten, yet the tree is still alive and puts out new s…
Monuments & mounds
Radziechowy
The stainless-steel cross on top of Matyska gleams in the sun and can be seen from far away. The hill (609 m above sea level) above Radziechowy, about 7 km south-west of Żywiec town centre, is the last distinct high point on a ridge of the…
Other
Tarnowskie Góry
Step off the train in Tarnowskie Góry and you walk straight into five hundred years of the town's history, painted on a single wall. The Jubilee Mural at the transport interchange next to the station is around 120 metres long and, accordin…
Museums
Skoczów
In the cellar of the house at Rynek 2, right next to Skoczów town hall, John Sarkander was born according to 17th-century accounts. He was a priest tortured to death in Olomouc in 1620 and canonised by John Paul II in 1995. Today the cella…
Landmarks
Katowice
Nikiszowiec (say "nee-kee-SHOH-vyets") is a historic coal miners' housing estate in Katowice, southern Poland, and one of the most photogenic places in the whole Upper Silesia region. Built more than a century ago, its nine red-brick block…
Gardens
Goczałkowice-Zdrój
The Kapias Gardens in Goczałkowice-Zdrój are the show gardens of a family-run nursery where you can spend a whole day – without paying a single złoty for admission. More than 30 themed gardens and corners spread over about 4.5 ha: from Jap…
Nature
Kroczyce
At the top of a limestone crag in the village of Piaseczno gapes a window measuring about 7 × 5 m – hence the name Okiennik Wielki, roughly "the Great Window Rock", one of the symbols of the northern Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, known as the…
Monuments & mounds
Olsztyn
At the entrance to Olsztyn near Częstochowa, travellers are greeted by a seven-metre wooden Guardian Angel. The sculpture by folk artist Jan Wewiór was set up on Pańska Góra hill in 2007 and has since become the emblem of this small Jurass…
Landmarks
Zabrze
Zandka is a company housing estate in the centre of Zabrze, built in 1903–1922 in the garden-city spirit for workers of the Donnersmarck ironworks. Around 40 multi-family houses of brick and half-timbering, with steep roofs and projecting…
Lakes
Tychy
Lake Paprocany, known locally simply as Paprocany, is not a natural lake. It is an artificial reservoir of 132 ha, dammed for a former ironworks whose water cooled the furnace casing and drove the bellows and the hammer. Today it is the mo…
Gardens
Siemianowice Śląskie
Górnik Park in Michałkowice, a district of Siemianowice Śląskie, is a former manor park surrounding a palace known locally as the Zameczek (Little Castle). On its edge stands a neo-Gothic forester's and gardener's house, anglers sit by the…
Gardens
Jaworzno
Gródek Park in Jaworzno (pronounced roughly "GROO-dek" and "yah-VOZH-noh"), nicknamed the "Polish Maldives," is a flooded former dolomite quarry turned public park, with turquoise lakes, a winding wooden boardwalk and gazebos standing in t…
Gardens
Gliwice
Right in the centre of Gliwice, between Sienkiewicza street and the city's east–west expressway, lies a fenced park with cast-iron lions, an oak more than two hundred years old and a palm house in the middle. Fryderyk Chopin Park was creat…