Castles

Olsztyn Castle

A white limestone crag crowned by a round tower and the square Staroscanska Tower forms one of the most recognizable silhouettes of the Trail of the Eagles' Nests. The ruins of Olsztyn Castle rise above a village near Czestochowa, and a viewpoint path climbs the rock past sections of the surviving residential walls.

The stronghold of Casimir the Great

The castle is first mentioned in 1306, and research carried out in 2010 confirmed that a 13th-century watchtower already stood here at the end of that century. In the 14th century Casimir the Great expanded it into one of the most formidable fortresses on the Silesian–Lesser Poland frontier. Tradition holds that Maciej Borkowic, the Palatine of Poznan, was imprisoned here and sentenced to death by starvation for plotting against the king.

Sieges and decline

In 1391 Spytek of Melsztyn, acting on Jogaila's orders, retaken the castle for the Crown after a week-long siege. The defense of 1587 passed into legend: castellan Kasper Karlinski held off the troops of Archduke Maximilian Habsburg, paying with the life of his abducted son. The Swedish Deluge delivered the final blow — in 1655 the Swedes stormed and ruined the fortress, which was never rebuilt. The ruins later served as a quarry, among other things for the parish church built in 1722–1726.

On the trail

The walk to the summit and its panorama of the Jura takes about an hour, and the crag remains one of the most popular climbing areas of the Krakow-Czestochowa Upland. In 2019, several hundred Neanderthal flint tools were discovered at the lower castle — people gathered under this rock long before the first masonry castle was built.