Hiking Trails in Piekary Śląskie

Piekary Śląskie, a city with county rights in the heart of the Upper Silesian Industrial Region, links five waymarked hiking trails. They run through places central to the region's history: traces of the march of John III Sobieski's hussars, memorials of the Silesian Uprisings and a nineteenth-century coal mine.

Four thematic trails

The red Polish Hussars Trail consists of two sections: the western one from Szarlej through Piekary to Kozłowa Góra (8.3 km) and the eastern one from Dąbrówka Wielka to Brzeziny Śląskie (6.3 km). It commemorates the march towards Vienna — on 20 August 1683 King John III Sobieski prayed in the Piekary church of St Bartholomew before the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary.

The blue Silesian Uprisings Trail (Szarlej – Piekary – Mount of Liberation – Radzionków, 5.6 km) recalls the insurgent units led by Franciszek Graniczny and Józef Kałdonek. On the way it passes the Mount of Liberation (Kopiec Wyzwolenia), heaped in 1932–1937 on the Kocie Górki hills, on the site of a soldier's oath.

The green Millennium of the Polish State Trail (Radzionków – the mound – Piekary – Kozłowa Góra, 6.5 km) runs past an eighteenth-century manor farm, while the yellow Trail of the History of Upper Silesian Mining (7.5 km) links the nineteenth-century Rozalia mine with the church of Our Lady Help of Christians from 1903 and the church of Saints Peter and Paul from 1899. A short black linking trail (0.7 km) completes the network.

In practice

The routes can be combined and shortened, and their most interesting points — the basilica and the Mount of Liberation — lie within a short walk of the town centre.