107 attractions in the Holy Cross region, including Jewish Cemetery in Busko-Zdrój, Collegium Gostomianum in Sandomierz and St Stephen's Church in Mnichów.
Landmarks
Busko-Zdrój
Behind a stone wall on ul. Widuchowska, about a kilometre east of the centre of Busko-Zdrój, lies the cemetery of the spa town's former Jewish community. Not a single gravestone remains in its original place – the surviving matzevot have b…
Landmarks
Sandomierz
The plans for this college in Sandomierz were drawn in Rome, and one of the designs is still kept today in the National Library of France in Paris. The long white building on the edge of the Vistula escarpment has housed a school since 160…
Churches & monasteries
Jędrzejów
On the E77 road from Kielce to Kraków, in Mnichów near Jędrzejów, stands a wooden church that looks nothing like a typical village church. It was built of larch on a Latin-cross plan, with two small towers on the facade and an octagonal do…
Palaces
Samborzec
The manor house in Skotniki, in the Samborzec district south-west of Sandomierz, is a rare example of a fortified noble residence of the "alkierz" type: a single-storey main block with four corner pavilions, a tall broken roof covered with…
Churches & monasteries
Sandomierz
Every evening – so the local tradition handed down in Sandomierz goes – the cathedral bell remembers those who fell at the Battle of Varna and those who drowned in the Vistula. The tall stone bell tower beside the Cathedral Basilica was bu…
Churches & monasteries
Wiślica
To the left of the basilica entrance in Wiślica stands a square tower whose upper half is wrapped in a lattice of dark brick diamonds. It was funded by Jan Długosz – chronicler, canon and tutor to the royal princes – and under its roof he…
Amusement parks
Szydłów
The European Fairy Tale Centre in Pacanów (roughly "pa-TSAH-noof") is a children's culture center built around Koziołek Matołek, the little goat who stars in one of Poland's best-loved picture books. In the 1932 story by Kornel Makuszyński…
Hiking & tourist trails
Święta Katarzyna
The red-marked trail from Gołoszyce to Kuźniaki is the backbone of hiking in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains (Holy Cross Mountains): it crosses Łysica and Łysa Góra, the boulder fields known as gołoborza, Święty Krzyż and Święta Katarzyna, an…
Nature
Nowa Słupia
The boulder field on Łysa Góra (say "WIH-sah GOO-rah"; the field is called a gołoborze, "goh-woh-BOH-zheh") is the largest expanse of bare quartzite rock in Poland's Holy Cross Mountains. This gray "sea of stones" pours down the northern s…
Mountains & peaks
Chęciny
Miedzianka (pronounced roughly "myeh-JAN-kah", from the Polish word for copper) is a rocky limestone ridge, 354 m (1,161 ft) high, in the Świętokrzyskie (Holy Cross) Mountains of south-central Poland. Its summit offers a full 360-degree vi…
Nature
Sandomierz
The rocks beneath your feet here settled on the floor of a Cambrian sea about 500 million years ago. The Pepper Mountains (Góry Pieprzowe), known locally as "Pieprzówki", form a steep escarpment above the Vistula about 2.5 km from Sandomie…
Historic sites
Wiślica
The Wiślica hillfort (in Polish "grodzisko", roughly "gro-JEES-ko"), also called the hillfort "in the meadows", is an early medieval archaeological site on a low island ringed by the Nida River and its old channels, a few hundred meters so…
Churches & monasteries
Strawczyn
On the summit of Perzowa Góra, massive blocks of red sandstone have split apart to form a cleft, and inside it is a chapel dedicated to St Rosalia – the saint invoked against plague. During the great epidemics of the 19th century, numerous…
Amusement parks
Bałtów
Before concrete tyrannosaurs arrived in Bałtów, there was a legend about the devil. A mark in the rock above the Kamienna valley, known as the Devil's Footprint (Czarcia Stopka), was said to have been left by the devil leaping across the r…
Old towns & squares
Sandomierz
Sandomierz Market Square is not flat: between its upper and lower corners the difference in height reaches 15 metres, so the houses around it stand as if on steps. Beneath them run cellars and passages dug into the loess, and in one of the…
Churches & monasteries
Busko-Zdrój
The little neo-Gothic church on the highest point of the Spa Park in Busko-Zdrój was built practically without permission. According to local history it went up in three weeks, while a tsarist official was away, and its builder paid for it…
Churches & monasteries
Chęciny
The Franciscans came to Chęciny in 1368 at the invitation of King Casimir the Great and, with a long break, are still here. In between, their friary burned, served as a Protestant church, spent more than a century as a prison and, under co…
Churches & monasteries
Nowa Słupia
Święty Krzyż Monastery (say "SHVYEN-ti kshish," meaning "Holy Cross") crowns Łysa Góra, a 594 m summit in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains of central Poland. This former Benedictine abbey has kept relics believed to be fragments of the True Cr…
Churches & monasteries
Jędrzejów
The Cistercian Archabbey in Jędrzejów (YEN-dzheh-yoof), a town in south-central Poland between Kraków and Kielce, is the oldest Cistercian monastery in the country, founded in 1140 by monks from Morimond in France. It is also the shrine of…
Churches & monasteries
Koprzywnica
In the high-altar painting of the Assumption, made by Bartłomiej Strobel in 1645, tradition has it that King Władysław IV Vasa appears among the figures. This portrait is one of many secrets of the former Cistercian abbey in Koprzywnica ne…
Churches & monasteries
Wiślica
The Collegiate Basilica in Wiślica (pronounced roughly "veesh-LEE-tsah"), dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, is a Gothic church founded by King Casimir the Great and one of the most important medieval sites in Poland. It is prot…
Churches & monasteries
Szydłów
Outside the town walls of Szydłów, next to the parish cemetery, stand the stone ruins of the Holy Spirit church and a former hospital for the poor and elderly. The municipality stresses that it is a rare surviving example in Świętokrzyskie…
Churches & monasteries
Busko-Zdrój
The Church of the Immaculate Conception is the oldest church in Busko-Zdrój and a remnant of the Norbertine convent that stood here for more than six centuries. The first church on the site was founded around 1166 by the knight Dzierżko, a…
Churches & monasteries
Chęciny
St Bartholomew's Church stands at the foot of the castle hill and can be seen clearly from the castle walls. It is the parish church of a royal town, linked with King Władysław the Short and Casimir the Great, and for several decades it wa…