Discover Radzionków: Nature, Pilgrimage Route and History

Garden and park: two distinct green spaces

The Silesian Botanical Garden in Radzionków covers about 16 hectares. Its habitats include wooded areas, thickets, grassland, meadows and bodies of water. It also has plant collections featuring woody plants, fruit plants, ornamental plants and plants for bee forage. Different vegetation types and plant groups can therefore be found side by side in the garden—a distinct botanical aspect of the town, different from a single park.

The Botanical Garden is also home to a Regional Environmental Education Centre. It includes a microscopy room, a laboratory and a seminar room. Księża Góra Park offers a different scale: it covers 30 hectares and lies at an elevation of 357 metres. These figures make it easy to compare the garden and park in terms of size; the Via Regia also gives both green spaces a shared connection within Radzionków.

The Via Regia through Radzionków

The Via Regia section of the Way of St James runs through the town of Radzionków. The pilgrimage route leads to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Within the town, the Via Regia passes through Księża Góra Park and the Silesian Botanical Garden. For your planning, the route thus connects two distinct green spaces with a pilgrimage route known far beyond the region, while each place retains its own character.

If you are interested in pilgrimage routes, Radzionków offers a specific route that passes through both of the sites mentioned above. If you are more interested in botanical diversity, you can explore the garden’s habitats and plant collections; the park, meanwhile, is distinguished by its size and elevation. This distinction makes the town’s nature and route-related attractions easy to appreciate without combining them into a single experience.

History in exhibitions, museums and architecture

The Centre for Documentation of the Deportations of Upper Silesians to the USSR in 1945 has a permanent exhibition on the history of the deportations. Its educational programmes explore the history of Upper Silesia and are primarily intended for primary and secondary school students. They use historical objects, source texts and parts of the exhibition as part of a “living history” approach. The focus is therefore not only on the permanent exhibition, but also on the educational formats described and their target audience.

The Mining Open-Air Museum commemorates the long history of the local hard coal mine, which was successively called “Radzionkau Grube”, “Radzionków” and “Powstańców Śląskich”. Exhibits include a flywheel and several mine carts originally used to transport coal. A St Barbara’s Chapel is housed in a former transformer station dating from around the turn of the 20th century. Together, the named objects and the building’s former purpose tell different aspects of the history of mining.

The Muzeum Chleba, Szkoły i Ciekawostek offers another historical perspective. It presents historic tools used by bakers and confectioners, as well as the history and traditions of bread-making. St Wojciech Church adds a building to the town’s museum and industrial history: it is a Neo-Gothic, three-nave brick basilica, consecrated in 1875. Radzionków thus showcases both the history of work and bread-making and striking ecclesiastical architecture.

Getting to know Radzionków as a travel destination

The garden, park and Via Regia are useful points of reference if nature and pilgrimage traditions are your main interests. The exhibitions, Mining Open-Air Museum, bread museum and church give the town a distinctive historical character.

Discover more destinations

Discover more destinations: Miasteczko Śląskie, Boniowice, Kalety, Wieszowa, Świerklaniec, Szałsza, Krupski Młyn, Ziętek.

For the overview of the wider area: Tarnowitz.