Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Landmarks
Katowice
The oldest building in Katowice was not built in Katowice. The wooden Church of St Michael the Archangel stood in Syrynia near Wodzisław Śląski for more than four centuries, and in 1938 it was taken apart beam by beam and reassembled on Be…
Churches & monasteries
Ruda Śląska
It was meant to be dedicated to St Anthony, like its "older brother" in Rheine in Westphalia – but the director of the local steelworks, Paul Gasz, persuaded the parish to choose another patron. The Church of St Paul the Apostle in Ruda Śl…
Churches & monasteries
Tworków
In September 1993, during renovation of the Baroque church in Tworków, builders found a walled-up entrance to a crypt beneath the pews in the south side of the nave. Inside, under sand and rubble, lay 11 painted metal sarcophagi of the Rei…
Churches & monasteries
Żarki
At first glance the parish church in Żarki looks like a 19th-century building – and in part it is. Beneath its eclectic exterior, however, stand the walls of a church built in 1518–1522 and funded by Marcin Myszkowski, castellan of Wieluń.…
Churches & monasteries
Ruda Śląska
Around 1900 the number of parishioners in Kochłowice grew tenfold, as coal mines drew thousands of workers to Upper Silesia. The small Baroque church from 1806 was no longer big enough, so a twin-towered Holy Trinity Church rose right next…
Churches & monasteries
Zabrze
On Church Hill in the Mikulczyce district of Zabrze stands the neo-Gothic Church of St Lawrence, but the parish is far older than its brick walls. A collection of Peter's Pence was recorded here as early as 1326, and a late-18th-century pa…
Churches & monasteries
Jeleśnia
On the road from Żywiec to the Slovak border crossing at Korbielów, in the upper part of Jeleśnia, stands the Baroque Church of St Adalbert (św. Wojciech). Its tower is topped with a domed cap that looks more like the churches on the Slova…
Churches & monasteries
Racibórz
The parish church on the Market Square in Racibórz is one of the oldest parish churches in Upper Silesia and the only one in the town that has kept the features of early Gothic. Behind its west front hides an unusual addition – the Polish…
Churches & monasteries
Zbrosławice
The Church of the Assumption in Zbrosławice near Tarnowskie Góry is a Gothic-baroque church from the 15th century and the Sanctuary of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At its heart is a 43-centimetre wooden figure of the Virgin a…
Churches & monasteries
Brenna
The attic of All Saints Church in Górki Wielkie is home to one of the most valuable bat colonies in the region, and behind the church, in the cemetery on the Kępka Prochaskowa hillock, lies the writer Zofia Kossak. The church itself is one…
Churches & monasteries
Poręba
The red-brick tower with its sharp spire is the highest point in Poręba. Construction of this Gothic Revival church began at Pentecost 1901 – hence its dedication to the Descent of the Holy Spirit, recalled by the dove above the main entra…
Churches & monasteries
Goczałkowice-Zdrój
St Anne's little church in Goczałkowice-Zdrój was meant to stand somewhere else, out in the fields. According to local legend, the building materials mysteriously moved overnight to the present site three times – and that is where the chur…
Museums
Częstochowa
Among silver votive offerings, robes for the Miraculous Icon and 17th-century portraits of monks lies an object straight from a church-fair stall: a big red ballpoint pen with a postcard of Pope John Paul II inside. On 31 August 1980 Lech…
Technical monuments
Chorzów
Until 1934 Chorzów was called Królewska Huta – Royal Ironworks – after the plant around which the town grew. The hall of that ironworks' former power station now houses the Museum of Metallurgy, the first museum in Poland devoted entirely…
Museums
Istebna
A highlander from Istebna who studied in Kraków under Mehoffer and Fałat and later in Paris won a bronze medal at an exhibition in Paris in 1937, then spent the last decades of his life working in near obscurity. Jan Wałach (1884–1979), a…
Museums
Jaworzno
The first hard-coal mine on Polish soil opened in the 1760s in Szczakowa, today a district of Jaworzno. The Jaworzno City Museum tells that story in a building that once belonged to a colliery, and alongside mining it covers a subject the…
Museums
Katowice
Until the 1980s, women from Nikiszowiec carried baskets of bed linen here, scrubbed it on washboards in masonry troughs and ran it through an electric mangle. Today the old laundry at Rymarska 4 houses the City Ethnology Department of the…
Museums
Pszczyna
In a low house with a shingle roof on Pszczyna's pedestrian street, you can print your own souvenir sheet on a historic press. The Wojciech Korfanty Silesian Press Museum describes itself as the only museum of its kind in Poland that, besi…
Museums
Lubliniec
At ul. Edyty Stein 2 in Lubliniec stands the townhouse where Edith Stein's grandparents – the Courant family – lived. Since 28 February 2009 its upper floor has housed the Pro Memoria Edith Stein Museum, devoted to the philosopher, Carmeli…
Technical monuments
Częstochowa
The Match Production Museum in Częstochowa (say "chen-stoh-HOH-vah") is the only museum of its kind in Poland: a historic match factory, the oldest on Polish soil, with its 1920s–30s production line still in place. It is a must for fans of…
Museums
Cieszyn
The Museum of Cieszyn Silesia is the oldest public museum in Poland and one of the oldest in Central Europe – it was founded in 1802 by the priest Leopold Jan Szersznik, who opened his collections to visitors. Since 1931 it has occupied th…
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…
Museums
Dąbrowa Górnicza
The Sztygarka Town Museum tells the story of the Dąbrowa Basin (Zagłębie Dąbrowskie) in a Neoclassical building at ul. Legionów Polskich 69 in Dąbrowa Górnicza, and its biggest draw is the Training Mine – real underground workings where fu…
Museums
Częstochowa
The Częstochowa Museum (Muzeum Częstochowskie; say "chen-sto-HO-vah") is the city museum of Częstochowa, the southern Polish city best known for the Jasna Góra Monastery and its Black Madonna icon. Its flagship branch is the 19th-century T…