Every design for Czechowice-Dziedzice

Czechowice-Dziedzice grew up where the Biała flows into the Vistula, on the north-eastern edge of Cieszyn Silesia, and its double name comes from two medieval villages joined into a single town. A railway station opened in Dziedzice in the nineteenth century, industry followed, and today four stations sit where two major lines cross.

The country around it is wilder than a mining town has any right to expect. The upper Vistula valley is a Natura 2000 area where terns, night herons and great crested grebes nest each spring, the Rotuz nature reserve lies within the commune, and the Goczałkowice reservoir spreads out just beyond the northern boundary. Locals tend to remember the fields and riverbanks as vividly as the coal mine and the refinery, and Pałac Kotulińskich with the Izba Regionalna keeps the village past within reach.

The detail people bring up first, though, is the graduation tower, Tężnia solankowa, where brine from the deposits nearby trickles down its walls and the air tastes faintly of salt.