Silesia: Wrocław & Katowice

Silesia entered written history as a Slavic land absorbed into the early Polish state, and Wrocław received a bishopric in 1000. After 1138 it passed to the Silesian branch of the Piast dynasty, whose dukes invited German settlers, founded towns and split the land into many small duchies. In 1335 the duchies came under the Bohemian crown, and with Bohemia they passed in 1526 to the Habsburgs. Frederick the Great seized most of Silesia for Prussia in 1742, and it became a German province, its south-east transformed in the 19th century into one of Europe's great coal and steel districts.

After the First World War, Upper Silesia was disputed: three Silesian uprisings and a 1921 plebiscite ended with its partition, giving Katowice to Poland as an autonomous province with its own parliament. Lower Silesia and Opole stayed German.

In 1945 the front reached Breslau, which the Germans held as a fortress city under a siege that wrecked it. The Potsdam settlement gave almost all Silesia to Poland; most Germans were expelled and replaced by Poles, including many from Lwów, which had passed to the Soviet Union and whose Ossolineum library moved to Wrocław. Upper Silesians who were judged Polish stayed, and around Opole a German minority remains. Under communism the Katowice coalfield powered the economy, and since 1989 its mines have been closing while Wrocław has grown into one of Poland's most dynamic cities.

Upper Silesians have a strong regional identity, separate from both Poles and Germans in the eyes of many, built on mining, Catholic piety and family life. Many speak Silesian, ślōnsko godka, a Slavic speech with German loanwords; its supporters want it recognised as a regional language, which has not yet happened. The mining year peaks on Barbórka, St Barbara's Day on 4 December, when miners parade in black uniforms with plumed caps.

Opole Silesia is the centre of Poland's German minority, and German is an additional official language in 28 of its communes. Opole has hosted the National Festival of Polish Song, a televised fixture, since the 1960s.

Lower Silesia's culture is newer, formed by the settlers of 1945 and their descendants, who took over German houses and churches and made them their own. Wrocław has a reputation for tolerance and invention: its hundreds of bronze dwarfs recall the Orange Alternative, a 1980s movement that mocked the regime with absurd happenings. The region also has Lutheran heritage in the Cieszyn area around Wisła, where Protestant congregations remain unusually strong for Poland.

Wrocław has about 670,000 people and a young population drawn by its universities and the electronics, IT and business-services firms that have settled there. The Katowice conurbation — Katowice, Gliwice, Zabrze, Sosnowiec, Chorzów, Bytom and others — forms Poland's largest urban area, with over two million people. Opole has about 125,000; Częstochowa, Bielsko-Biała, Wałbrzych and Jelenia Góra are the other main towns.

Coal is fading. Upper Silesia's remaining mines are due to close by 2049 under a deal between government and unions, and Katowice has reinvented itself with concert halls, conferences — it hosted the 2018 UN climate summit — and technology firms, while Wałbrzych, whose mines closed in the 1990s, has long struggled. Car and appliance factories and a special economic zone support the region.

Life in the Silesian towns still follows the tradition of the family Sunday dinner and the local parish. Air pollution from home heating, the costs of the coal transition and the repair of towns hit by the 2024 floods are live issues.

Silesia's classic is the Sunday dinner: rolada śląska, beef roulades rolled around bacon, onion and gherkin, served with kluski śląskie, round potato dumplings pressed with a dimple to hold the gravy, and modra kapusta, braised red cabbage. Before it comes rosół, the clear chicken soup, and after it a slice of kołocz śląski, a flat yeast cake topped with curd cheese, poppy seed or apple under crumble, protected by EU designation.

Everyday dishes include żur śląski, a sour rye soup, and krupnioki, sausages of blood and barley groats fried with onions. At Christmas families make moczka, a dark sweet of gingerbread, dried fruit and nuts, and makówki, a poppy-seed and bread pudding. Cieszyn and the Beskid villages add sheep's cheese from the mountain pastures.

Beer is the regional drink: Tyskie from Tychy and Żywiec from the Beskid town of the same name are among Poland's best-known brands. Wrocław's food scene is broad and international, and small vineyards have been replanted in Lower Silesia's hills.

Wrocław, on the Oder and its many islands, has one of Europe's largest market squares, dominated by the Gothic town hall, and Ostrów Tumski, the cathedral island where a lamplighter still lights gas lamps at dusk. The Racławice Panorama, the Ossolineum and Centennial Hall, a pioneering concrete dome of 1913 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are nearby.

South-west, Książ Castle in Wałbrzych, seat of the Hochberg family, stands above a wooded gorge with wartime tunnels under it, and the Churches of Peace at Świdnica and Jawor are UNESCO-listed. The Karkonosze National Park protects the granite ridge up to Śnieżka, climbed from Karpacz, whose Wang stave church was brought from Norway in the 1840s, and from Szklarska Poręba. Further south-east, the Table Mountains have sandstone labyrinths and the Kłodzko valley has spas.

In Upper Silesia, Katowice offers the Silesian Museum in a former mine, the Spodek arena and the Nikiszowiec estate; Zabrze's Guido mine and the UNESCO-listed historic silver mine at Tarnowskie Góry go underground, and Częstochowa's Jasna Góra monastery holds the Black Madonna. The Beskid Śląski rises above Wisła and Szczyrk.

Opole has its Piast tower and Oder islands, with Moszna's many-turreted castle and St Anne's Mountain, a pilgrimage hill and battle site of 1921, in its province.