★ Town · Katowice and Upper SilesiaKatowiceA red-brick miners' estate, with blocks closed around courtyards, red-framed windows and a large church, still almost as it was a hundred years ago.
The storyBetween 1908 and 1918 the Giesche mining company commissioned the architects Emil and Georg Zillmann to build a village for its miners: nine blocks of three-storey houses with bread ovens in the courtyards, a school, shops, a laundry and St Anne's Church. Miners' families lived here generation after generation, and some still do. In 2011 the estate was declared a national historic monument; today it has galleries, cafés and the Museum of the History of Katowice.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Katowice and Upper SilesiaGliwiceA 111-metre larch tower, the tallest wooden structure in Europe, linked to the first act of the Second World War.
The storyUntil 1945 Gliwice was the German town of Gleiwitz, close to the Polish border. On the evening of 31 August 1939 an SS unit disguised as Polish insurgents stormed the radio station, broadcast a short proclamation in Polish and left behind the body of a murdered prisoner. The next day Hitler cited this and other staged attacks to justify the invasion of Poland. The tower, built in 1935 without metal nails, has survived intact to this day, and there is a small museum beside it.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Nature · Częstochowa and the JuraDąbrowa GórniczaAn expanse of sand covering dozens of square kilometres in the middle of the woods, known as the "Polish Sahara".
The storyThe sand was deposited at the end of the ice age, but the desert is largely man-made: from the Middle Ages, clearing the forest for the local lead and silver mines left the ground bare of trees and the wind began to shift the sand, which in places is tens of metres deep. As late as the 1950s the desert covered more than thirty square kilometres; then pines and birches began to reclaim it, and today parts of it are cleared to preserve it. From two viewpoints, Czubatka and Dąbrówka, you can see the whole expanse.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · Cieszyn, Pszczyna and the BeskidsCieszynA town divided in two by a river: on one side Polish Cieszyn, on the other Czech Český Těšín, joined by a bridge.
The storyFor centuries Cieszyn was the capital of a duchy between Poland and Bohemia. In 1920, after a brief conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia, an international conference drew the border along the Olza river, which cuts the town in two: the historic centre went to Poland, the station and the new town to the Czechs. On the castle hill stands the 11th-century Romanesque rotunda of St Nicholas, pictured on the 20-złoty banknote. Today people walk across the bridge for a coffee in Poland and a beer in the Czech Republic.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · Cieszyn, Pszczyna and the BeskidsKoniakówA mountain village on the border with Slovakia and the Czech Republic where women crochet a lace famous throughout Poland.
The storySince the 19th century the women of Koniaków, Istebna and Jaworzynka, the three villages of the "Trójwieś", have crocheted white lace with flower and star patterns, first to decorate highlanders' costumes, then for doilies and tablecloths. In the 20th century their work was given to queens and popes; in the early 2000s it made headlines across Europe when some lacemakers began making lace lingerie. The village has a museum and you can watch the lacemakers at work.
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