Katowice travel guide

Top 10 sights in Katowice

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1. 

   1© Adrian Tync · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Spodek

   A multipurpose arena of 1971 whose name means saucer, a hyperbolic concrete shell tilted on one edge and cantilevered without internal columns — a serious engineering feat for its date. It seats about 11,500 and is Katowice's emblem.

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2. 

   2© Geociekawostki · CC BY-SA 3.0 pl

   Będzin Castle

   A stone castle of the fourteenth century at Będzin on a hill above the Czarna Przemsza, replacing an eleventh-century timber stronghold. Casimir the Great built it as part of the chain guarding the Silesian frontier; the keep and walls are restored as a museum.

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3. 

   3

   Będzin Ghetto

   The ghetto German authorities announced at Będzin in July 1940, holding about 25,000 Jews from a town that had been a third Jewish before the war. A Jewish resistance group fought here in August 1943 as the ghetto was liquidated to Auschwitz, thirty kilometres away.

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4. 

   4© Piotr Wojnowski · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sosnowiec Ghetto

   A ghetto set up in the Środula district of Sosnowiec, from which more than 35,000 people were deported to Auschwitz in the sweeps of June to August 1943. An armed rising by the Jewish Combat Organisation preceded its final liquidation.

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5. 

   5© Andrzej Otrębski · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Guido Mine and Coal Mining Museum

   A working deep coal mine at Zabrze, opened in 1855 and now a museum where visitors descend to 320 metres — the deepest level of any mine open to the public in Europe. Concerts and a bar operate at the 320-metre level, which is the local sense of humour.

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6. 

   6© Krzysztof Popławski · CC BY 4.0

   Sosnowiec Główny

   The main station of Sosnowiec, nine kilometres east of Katowice, served by Polregio and PKP Intercity trains. It sits at the junction of lines that carried Upper Silesian coal to the rest of the empire.

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7. 

   7© YanelaSh · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Nikiszowiec

   A workers' housing estate begun in 1908 by the Giesche mining company, of nine linked red brick blocks around courtyards, with its own church, school, shops and laundry. It was designed as a self-contained village and is now a listed historic monument.

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8. 

   8© Bieniecki Piotr · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Silesian Museum in Katowice

   A museum of Silesian history and art, rebuilt in 2015 on the site of a closed coal mine with all the galleries underground and only glass light-shafts above the surface. The shape is a direct reference to what the ground beneath it was used for.

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9. 

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   Bytom Synagogue

   A Reform synagogue of 1869 in Bytom, then Prussian Beuthen, one of the largest in Upper Silesia. It was burned by the Nazis on the night of 9 November 1938 and nothing of it remains.

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10. 

    10

    Great Synagogue

    A synagogue of 1900 designed by Max Grünfeld in a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance Revival, and the largest in Katowice. German troops burned it in the first days of September 1939; a memorial marks the site on Mickiewicza Street.

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1. 

   1© Michozord · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Silesian Park

   A recreation complex of 620 hectares at Chorzów, twice the size of Central Park, laid out from 1951 on reclaimed mining land. It holds the planetarium, the zoo, the amusement park, an open-air ethnographic museum and a cable car across the middle.

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2. 

   2© Adrian Tync · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Silesian Amusement Park

   A 26-hectare amusement park inside Silesian Park, opened in 1959 and rebranded Legendia in 2017 around Slavic folklore. Its wooden coaster Lech, built in 2017, is the tallest in Poland.

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3. 

   3© Adrian Tync · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Christ the King Cathedral in Katowice

   The Catholic cathedral of Katowice, built between 1927 and 1955 in a stripped classical style, and at 120,000 cubic metres the largest cathedral in Poland. The autonomous Silesian parliament paid for it; the dome had to be lowered from the original design for lack of money.

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4. 

   4© Adrian Tync · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Market Square in Katowice

   The main square of Katowice, laid out in the late nineteenth century as the town grew on coal, and rebuilt several times since — most recently in 2015, when the trams were brought back across it. Fountains and lawns replaced the traffic circle.

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5. 

   5© Fotoomnia · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Silesian Planetarium

   The largest and oldest planetarium in Poland, opened on 4 December 1955 for the Copernicus anniversary, in Silesian Park. Its dome is twenty-three metres across; the whole building was renovated and reopened in 2022 as a science centre.

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6. 

   6© Abraham · CC BY 3.0

   Silesian Zoological Garden

   A zoo founded in 1954 across Katowice and Chorzów, on 47.6 hectares inside Silesian Park, holding about 2,500 animals of 300 species. It runs European breeding programmes for the Przewalski's horse among others.

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7. 

   7© Ludwig Schneider · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Chorzów Batory

   A district of Chorzów, a separate municipality until early 1939 and before that the German steel town of Bismarckhütte. It is the home ground of Ruch Chorzów, one of the most decorated football clubs in Poland.

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8. 

   8© Ewkaa · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bogucice

   A district in northern Katowice in the Chorzów hills, and the oldest settlement in the city — the village existed before Katowice did. The Culture Zone with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra hall and the Silesian Museum is in it.

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   FM- and TV-mast Kosztowy

   A 358.7-metre guyed mast near Kosztowy in Mysłowice, carrying FM radio and television for the Katowice conurbation. It replaced an earlier Katowice mast that was dismantled in the 1970s.

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10. 

    10© Urząd Miasta Bytom · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Szombierki

    A district in southern Bytom, whose Szombierki power station of 1920 — a brick cathedral of a building, now disused — is a listed industrial monument. The Krystyna winding tower of the former colliery was protected in 2004.

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