The history of Katowice: a city in motion
Before exploring its façades, discover the story. Read Katowice in layers: early settlements, industrial growth and today’s cultural city.
Read the storyCity & surroundings
Katowice. Silesia. Stories worth the journey.
Discover the city through its people, architecture and memory. From the market square and brick-built neighbourhoods to underground routes and places that invite reflection.
Start with history
City and regional history
Silesia: many voices, one region
Silesia cannot be reduced to a single image. Work, home, language, faith and changing borders all belong to its story.
Read the storyGliwice: the radio station and the history of propaganda
Technology can connect people, but it can also serve manipulation. The radio station invites reflection on both possibilities.
Read the storyKatowice up close
The market square: Katowice in one frame
Begin your conversation with the city here. Rather than a uniform old town, look for different ideas of modern life meeting in one place.
Read the storyNikiszowiec: brick, courtyards and everyday life
Red brick sets the rhythm of the district. The most interesting question is not only how it was built, but how people lived here.
Read the storyGiszowiec: the garden settlement idea
After the compact streets of Nikiszowiec, discover a different scale. Giszowiec invites you to consider the relationship between home, trees and shared space.
Read the storyModernism, townhouses and a wooden church
Katowice has more than one architectural face. Discover it through contrasts: façade details, modernist lines and the texture of timber.
Read the storyThe Culture Zone: a new chapter for an industrial site
This is a place to think about change. What does a city keep from its past, and what does it add for future generations?
Read the storyIndustrial heritage
The Industrial Monuments Route: a region shaped by work
A mine is only the beginning. Behind each machine lie an idea, effort and the everyday lives of people who kept the region moving.
Read the storyZabrze: Guido Mine and the Queen Louise Adit
Underground, your perspective changes. In place of a city skyline come questions about light, water, transport and safe working conditions.
Read the storyTarnowskie Góry: silver and the engineering of water
Discover a story in which infrastructure hidden below ground matters as much as the ore itself.
Read the storyBeyond the city
Pszczyna: a residence and a gentler pace
After industrial stories, change perspective. In Pszczyna, consider how display, domestic life and landscape belong together.
Read the storyBędzin and the Jura: castles, borders and landscape
A journey from Katowice can also lead into Zagłębie and the Jura, neighbouring areas with their own histories. Not every day trip stays within historic Silesia.
Read the storyCieszyn: a hill, memory and a borderland
Slow down and let scale tell the story: a small chapel, a tower, a path and a view over rooftops.
Read the storyHeritage and trails: explore further
A guide is a beginning, not the whole region in a few chapters. Here is a way into broader documentation and official catalogues.
Read the storyJewish heritage and remembrance
Jewish heritage: people, places and absence
The history of Jewish residents does not begin with the Holocaust. It begins with families, work, religious life and building a city together.
Read the storyAuschwitz-Birkenau: remembrance and testimony
This place calls for time, preparation and quiet. It is an encounter with evidence of crimes and victims’ lives, not an entertainment stop.
Read the storySilesian places of remembrance: distinct histories
Not every camp belonged to the same system, and not every tragedy had the same perpetrators. Remembrance begins with precision.
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