Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Nature
Ślemień
"There is a great rock with water running over it, and beneath it a hole into which a hundred head of cattle could be driven" – this is how Andrzej Komoniecki, the mayor of Żywiec, described the spot in 1704 in his chronicle Dziejopis Żywi…
Nature
Złoty Potok
In 1857 Zygmunt Krasiński, one of Poland's great Romantic poets, came across a small cave in the limestone rocks above the Wiercica valley while walking near Złoty Potok. He described it and dug out the first bones of prehistoric animals h…
Other
Tarnowskie Góry
Gwarki (pronounced "GVAR-kee") is the annual town festival of Tarnowskie Góry ("tar-NOF-skyeh GOO-rih"), a former silver- and lead-mining town in Upper Silesia, southern Poland. Held every September since 1957, it celebrates the town's min…
Mountains & peaks
Złatna
Despite its name, this wide clearing has nothing to do with "hala" in the botanical sense of an alpine zone — "hala" is the local word for a mountain pasture, and this one was named after an owner called Biegun. Hala Bieguńska, one of the…
Mountains & peaks
Żabnica
Hala Boracza is a grassy saddle at around 860 m in the Żywiec Beskids, above the villages of Żabnica and Milówka – and on it stands a PTTK mountain hut with a history unlike any other in these mountains. It was built by the Jewish sports c…
Mountains & peaks
Brenna
In 1913, 211 sheep and 12 cows grazed at the Kotarz shepherd's hut above Brenna – at the time one of the largest in the Silesian Beskids. What the shepherds left behind is Hala Jaworowa, also known as Polana Kotarska: a broad mountain mead…
Mountains & peaks
Korbielów
Hala Miziowa is a wide, gently sloping meadow on the northern side of Pilsko, at about 1,230–1,310 m. A large PTTK mountain hut stands on it, and from the front you look out over the ridges of the Żywiec Beskids and the outline of Babia Gó…
Nature
Tarnowskie Góry
The Friedrich Mine washing tip in Tarnowskie Góry (Hałda popłuczkowa, pronounced roughly "TAR-nov-skyeh GOO-ri") is a flat-topped, orange mound of mining waste that has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2017. It is the leftov…
Other
Świerklaniec
The Cavalry Hubertus in Świerklaniec is an autumn festival of foresters, hunters and riders held in the historic park of the former Donnersmarck residence. In 2024 it reached its 26th edition, organised by the municipality together with th…
Technical monuments
Tarnowskie Góry
Industriada (pronounced "in-doos-tree-AH-dah") is an annual industrial heritage festival in Poland's Silesian Voivodeship, the region around Katowice. Each June, dozens of historic coal and silver mines, ironworks, breweries, railway sites…
Museums
Siewierz
South of the parish church in Siewierz, at 5 Kościuszki Street, stands a neat manor house with a mansard roof and dormers – the Old Commune Building. Since 2005 it has housed the Chamber of Tradition and Old Culture, a small museum about t…
Other
Katowice
Jarmark na Nikiszu is a December craft market on Plac Wyzwolenia in Nikiszowiec, a historic mining estate in Katowice. It has been held since 2008 on the first weekend after Barbórka, the miners' feast of St Barbara, and draws on that trad…
Other
Katowice
The Katowice Christmas Market (Jarmark Bożonarodzeniowy, roughly "YAR-mark bo-zho-na-ro-dze-NYO-vih") transforms the Main Square of Katowice, the capital of Poland's Silesia region, into a glowing winter village of wooden stalls, Ferris wh…
Other
Żarki
Żarki in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland has one of the liveliest markets in the region. The town hall calls it an "open-air supermarket": every Saturday up to 10,000 customers come here, choosing from around 500 stalls on a 1.5-hectare squa…
Nature
gmina Kroczyce
In 1942 the face of a German quarry cut the cave in two – its middle section was exposed and destroyed, and its two entrances became four. Even so, Głęboka Cave ("Deep Cave") in Góra Zborów near Podlesice is today the only cave in the nort…
Nature
Siedlec
In the woods beside the road from Żarki to Janów stands a limestone crag that cavers compare to a block of Swiss cheese. Ostrężnicka Cave runs right through it, with a network of passages about 90–98 m long and six openings, while traces o…
Nature
Brenna
In beech woodland on the southern slope of Trzy Kopce, at about 1,000 m, a 4.3 m shaft opens in a small hollow. Below it runs a maze of fissures and chambers about 1,244 m long – the Trzy Kopce Cave, also known as Klimczok's Grotto, is one…
Nature
Olsztyn
Behind a low opening in a limestone rock, right beside the red Eagles' Nests Trail, lies a chamber of about 10 × 8 m filled with thick flowstone columns up to 1.5 m tall. According to cavers' descriptions, no other cave in the Polish Jura…
Nature
Rzyki
In 1704 the Żywiec mayor and chronicler Andrzej Komoniecki wrote that under a great rock above the village of Las there was a hole so spacious that a hundred head of cattle could be driven into it. Today it is Komoniecki Cave – the most ac…
Lakes
Olsztyn
The small lake in Kusięta, in the Olsztyn municipality near Częstochowa, looks like an ordinary pond among meadows, but it is a geological rarity. It is the largest of a group of ponds that survive in karst sinkholes thanks to a layer of c…
Lakes
Świerklaniec
As late as the 1960s, excavators were at work here, digging sand used to backfill underground coal mine workings. Today Nakło-Chechło Lake (officially Jezioro Chechło-Nakło) is a body of water of about 90 hectares surrounded by pine forest…
Lakes
Niewiesze
Lake Pławniowice was not created by leisure planners – it exists because water kept flooding a sand quarry. The pit, which supplied backfill sand for Silesian coal mines, was flooded in the 1970s, and today it is a favourite spot for peopl…
Lakes
Siewierz
Beneath the surface of Przeczyce Reservoir lies the flooded valley of the Czarna Przemsza river, along with remains of field fortifications from the 1930s and the Second World War. The reservoir was created in 1963, when a dam blocked the…
Hiking & tourist trails
Częstochowa
The Kraków-Częstochowa Jura is a limestone upland between Kraków and Częstochowa where a bike lets you see several castles, rock towers and gorges in a single day. It is also Poland's largest karst area – there are about 900 caves between…