Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Korfantów
The date 1585 is carved above the tower door of the church in Ścinawa Nyska – a reminder of the Renaissance church of which only the tower survived. The rest was rebuilt in the 18th century in Baroque style, and the whole complex stands on…
Churches & monasteries
Głuchołazy
The little Church of St Roch in Głuchołazy is a memorial to the great plague epidemic that struck the town in the mid-14th century. A chapel was built here around 1350, and the present small church dates from 1626–1627. Its patron, St Roch…
Churches & monasteries
Korfantów
From the outside, Holy Trinity Church on Opolska Street in Korfantów looks like an early 20th-century building. That is only half the story: the building remodelled in 1909 hides a granite portal from around 1300, and the parish has existe…
Churches & monasteries
Dąbrowa
On a rise in Dąbrowa, about 11 km west of Opole on the edge of the Niemodlin Forest, stands the Church of St Lawrence, partly ringed by old lime trees. The parish is one of the oldest documented in Upper Silesia: the local priest – "Nicola…
Churches & monasteries
Głuchołazy
The twin-towered parish church of St Lawrence stands by the market square in Głuchołazy, and its oldest feature dates back to the medieval town. The Early Gothic portal has survived every rebuilding and ranks among Silesia's notable monume…
Churches & monasteries
Skoroszyce
Locals simply call it the "church in the field". The neo-Gothic Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross and Our Lady of Częstochowa stands alone among fields and meadows, right by national road 46 from Nysa towards Niemodlin and Opole, abo…
Churches & monasteries
Niemodlin
When conservators dismantled the Baroque high altar of the church in Niemodlin, Latin epitaphs and painted busts of apostles from the early 14th century appeared on the chancel wall. Among them is a rhyming four-line verse about a metre lo…
Churches & monasteries
Praszka
For generations the people of Praszka told each other that their church stood on wooden piles driven into marshy ground. Only a survey in 2000 disproved the legend: the stone foundations rest on natural ground, and any piles could only hav…
Historic sites
Kopice
Next to the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Kopice near Grodków stands the Neoclassical mausoleum of Joanna and Hans Ulrich Schaffgotsch. It is the grave of the "Silesian Cinderella" – a girl from a poor family who, at the ag…
Technical monuments
Strzeleczki
Anyone driving the local road from Komorniki towards Kórnica sees walls rising out of the woods that look more like an aristocratic residence than farm buildings. This is Amerykan – the ruins of a 19th-century mill complex on the Osobłoga…
Landmarks
Opole
A green, openwork footbridge over the Młynówka is one of the best-known sights in Opole. Locals call it the Green Bridge or the Lovers' Bridge, but its official name – Most Groszowy, the Penny Bridge – recalls the days when crossing it cos…
Fortifications
Byczyna
In 1588, under one of Byczyna's gates, Archduke Maximilian Habsburg is said to have laid down his arms after being defeated by Jan Zamoyski's army in the struggle for the Polish throne. That gate still stands – as does almost the entire ri…
Fortifications
Nysa
Nysa, the seat of the Bishops of Wrocław, was enclosed for five centuries by a ring of brick walls with four gates and 28 towers. In the 19th century the walls were demolished to link the cramped centre with new districts. Two gate towers…
Fortifications
Paczków
Paczków is known as the Polish Carcassonne, because few towns in the country have kept such a complete ring of medieval walls. An oval of fortifications about 1,200 metres long surrounds the old town with its grid of streets, and of the 24…
Fortifications
Strzelce Opolskie
Medieval Strzelce Opolskie was surprisingly small: from the Opole Gate to the Kraków Gate was just 250 m, and the whole wall circuit was about 900 m long, enclosing under 6 hectares. To the south the town was protected by the castle and by…
Museums
Góra Świętej Anny
The Museum of the Silesian Uprisings stands in woodland on the slope between Leśnica and Góra Świętej Anny – the area of the bloodiest fighting of the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921. A branch of the Museum of Opole Silesia, it holds almos…
Technical monuments
Paczków
On 15 July 1977 the last cart of coke at the Paczków gasworks was quenched – not with water, but with a symbolic glass of champagne. That cart, coke and all, now stands in the museum. Paczków has the only site in Poland where the complete…
Museums
Olesno
Olesno's museum is housed in a mid-18th-century Baroque townhouse on ulica Jaronia, with a distinctive gable framed by scrolls and topped by a semicircle. It is the easiest place to get to know the town's history – from its first settlers…
Museums
Opole
The Museum of Opole Silesia (Muzeum Śląska Opolskiego) is the main museum of the Opole region and one of the oldest in Silesia, founded in 1900. It occupies a handsome Baroque former Jesuit college on Mały Rynek (the "Small Market Square")…
Museums
Kluczbork
Cars drive right underneath the museum building in Kluczbork: in 1931–1932 part of the old castle's ground floor was demolished so a street could run beneath it. Inside is something even more unusual — the Oder bee tree, a fragment of a ho…
Cities & towns
Opole
Opole Venice (Opolska Wenecja, roughly "oh-POL-skah veh-NETS-yah") is the most photographed spot in Opole, southwestern Poland: a row of colorful townhouses rising straight out of the Młynówka channel and reflected in its still water. It i…
Museums
Nysa
The prince-bishops of Wrocław ruled not only a diocese from Nysa but an entire duchy – and they wanted to live like cardinals in Rome. The result is the three-storey, four-winged Bishops' Palace at ul. Biskupa Jarosława 11, counted among t…
Palaces
Rozkochów
Above the entrance to Rozkochów Palace you can still see the date 1734 and a cartouche with the arms of the family that owned the estate for almost a century. For decades this Baroque residence in the Walce district of the Opole region cru…
Palaces
Grodków
A white Gothic Revival palace with corner towers and stepped gables stands in a historic park near Grodków, beside ponds fed by artesian springs. Its owners included a Prussian field marshal rewarded for the wars against Napoleon and a cou…