Industrial Tourism in Silesia

Such a prediction would have got you locked up in the loony bin twenty years back, but Poland has done the impossible and now finds itself presented as a genuine tourist destination, a fact not lost on the flocks of weekend breakers who descend each weekend on its marzipan old towns. Taking pride of place is Kraków, a majestic city with a proud history and some 2.3 million artworks hidden away in its dusty courtyards. Not far behind, Poznań, Gdańsk and Wrocław have all become firm fixtures on the backpacker map, each boasting historic centres that could well have been designed by a team consisting of Hans Christian Anderson and the good Mr Kipling. Even Warsaw, once famed for its bleak, desolate boulevards has generated a name as one of New Europe’s liveliest capitals. So what of Katowice, and the Silesian region as a whole. A quick look around is enough to suggest works by Da Vinci are going to prove tough to find, so it’s with a fair degree of astonishment that most visitors learn that the landscape here – dotted with its derelict factories and overgrown slagheaps – is something of a tourist treasure. The industrial revolution transformed the region; what had been an idyllic rural backdrop suddenly found itself the focus of corpulent industrialists looking to make their fortunes from the coal and steel that had been discovered. Up went the factories and the chimney stacks, followed by huge migratory waves of people – both German and Polish – as everyone from balding fat cats to scruffy urchins looked to make a bob or two out of the newly discovered minerals. From thereon the region took on the appearance of an L.S Lowry picture, its fledgling cities filled with blackened buildings and shuffling matchstick figures.
The scorched earth policy followed by Hitler in the final years of WWII did little to dent Upper Silesia’s industrial importance. The communist authorities knew they had inherited goldmine, and set about exploiting it to the max. It was in these decades of haphazard commie rule that the region witnessed primitive exploitation of its mineral riches. Marked as an environmental black spot the region was fast heading for ecological catastrophe, a fate only narrowly averted by the collapse of the political system in 1989. Somewhat amazingly, and thanks in no small part to the ongoing cooperation between local government and foreign institutions, the ecological balance of the area looks safe. What’s more, it’s now possible for the intrepid tourist to tour the very facilities that made Silesia – and nearly destroyed it. In this double page bumper feature we’ve marked out a few of our favourites, though bear in mind we’re just touching the iceberg. Any anoraked enthusiasts are urged to get hold of a copy of the excellent ‘Szlak Zabytków Techniki Województwa Śląskiego’, a multi-lingual shiny pamphlet containing 29 must see sights. Pick it up from any Tourist Information points.