Where to Stay in Tarnowskie Góry, Silesian Voivodeship

What is Tarnowskie Góry known for?

Above a labyrinth of old mines that won silver, lead, and zinc for five centuries, it gave its underground workings and their great drainage tunnels to the World Heritage list, and visitors ride a boat through a flooded adit deep below the streets. The old pit-heads dot the parks. Water still fills the deep tunnels.

What are the main landmarks in Tarnowskie Góry?

The historic silver mine draws visitors below Tarnowskie Góry. The old workings, opened as a route through galleries and shafts left by centuries of miners, run deep under the town, the emblem of the city, below ground. A flooded adit gives a boat ride.

The Black Trout Adit carries visitors by boat along a drainage tunnel in the dark, while the old market square, the museum, and the mine parks mark the streets of Tarnowskie Góry.

What is the history of Tarnowskie Góry?

Tarnowskie Góry was born of a silver strike. When rich silver ore was found in the ground here around 1500, miners flocked in, a town sprang up, and dukes granted it the rights of a free mining town with its own laws and court. Water was the miners' great foe.

The deeper the shafts went, the more they flooded, and over the centuries the miners drove long drainage tunnels to carry the water away underground. The town led the age of the mine. Here, among the first on the continent, a steam engine was set to pump water from the pits, and the silver, lead, and zinc of Tarnowskie Góry made it famous across Europe.

In time the ore ran out. The mines closed one by one, but their shafts, tunnels, and drainage galleries remained, and the world came to honour them. The old adits still run with water.

Tarnowskie Góry keeps its silver mines and its tunnels under Silesia.

Where is Tarnowskie Góry?

Tarnowskie Góry lies in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, on the northern edge of the great Silesian industrial belt. The town sits on a low rise of ore-rich rock above the coal basin, among woods and old mine workings, north of Katowice. Wooded parks spread around.

The old workings run deep below.

What is the climate of Tarnowskie Góry?

A temperate continental climate holds over Tarnowskie Góry. Warm summers and cold, snowy winters cross the Silesian uplands, and rain falls through the year, with frost and snow in the cold months and mild spells between. Mist settles in the wooded parks in autumn.

Snow whitens the spoil-heaps in winter.

How do you get to Tarnowskie Góry?

Tarnowskie Góry lies in Upper Silesia, north of Katowice. Trains and roads run to it from Katowice and Gliwice across the industrial belt, and it is a hub of the Silesian rail network. Local lines branch to the Silesian towns.

Katowice lies about half an hour to the south.