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Katowice In Your Pocket

Katowice In Your Pocketfot. Archiwum UM Katowice
Without a doubt, 2013 is gonna be a banner year for Katowice. Much to the elation of the huddled masses (we at IYP included), the city is finally going to witness the completion of some of their huge construction projects and long term investments. In fact, the first and biggest was finished before the year even began. If you haven’t yet strolled through the new Katowice train station, jaw-dropped in awe, then make for this spacious place, post haste!

Katowice proper isn’t the only city in the Silesian Metropolis to upgrade its digs. On March 1st Katowice’s little sister Gliwice rolled out the red carpet and cut the ribbon for one of the largest and most modern shopping complexes in all of Poland: Europa Centralna. Strategically located near the crossroads of the A1 and A4 motorways, this massive mall will inevitably draw hundreds of thousands from near and far. To coincide with this occasion, we've reorganised our content a bit so that other cities in the conglomeration get their proper due, beginning with Gliwice. Visit our Further Afield section for more on the history, sights and top notch nightlife, restaurants and hotels of one of the region's most handsome hamlets. Much like the rest of Silesia, Gliwice is changing at an alarming pace and if you’ve never been, it’s the perfect moment to catch this Silesian star on the rise.

For many visitors it is hard to grasp the size and scope of Upper Silesia.  One of the many things that connects this metropolitan matrix is culture. In recent years Katowice and the whole Silesian region has emerged as one of the leading music, art and film destinations in Europe. Many consider Silesia’s post-industrial landscape to be one of its biggest downfalls, however a score of progressive festivals have turned this frown upside down, including August’s Tauron Nowa Muzyka festival - held on the premise of an old coal mine, or the upcoming Street Art Festival which takes over Katowice’s streets, walls and weird places, brightening up many of the city’s unused industrial spaces. Visit our Events section for the specifics of what’s on when.

As always, leave us some comments or drop us a line at editor_poland@inyourpocket.com to let us know how much you love Silesia. It’s okay now, you can admit it. Go on... 

A Bit About Katowice to Begin


One of Poland's least known and most surprising destinations, Katowice is a relatively young, predominantly working class city with a history tied up with the extraction of coal and other manly pursuits. Beginning life as a small, German-speaking town called Kattowitz in the early part of the 19th century, Katowice was incorporated within the borders of a new post-WWI Polish state, and thanks to its disparate racial and cultural heritage offers visitors a fascinating jumble of German Gothic, inter-war Art Nouveau and some shockingly different socialist architecture, all intermingled with a growing number of glistening capitalist palaces. Currently reinventing itself as a serious business destination and sadly ignored as a place to visit for any other reason, a sneaky glimpse under the cultural carpet reveals, among other delightful surprises, Poland's largest cathedral, one of the best museums in southern PL, a vast park filled with truly magnificent things to see and do, a bar scene to shame many of the country's so-called cutting edge cities and a reinforced concrete building that looks like a spaceship and plays music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Marvellous.

Our Katowice Highlights



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