Every design for Gliwice

Ever told someone you study in Gliwice and watched them picture only factories? This city on the Kłodnica, at the western end of the Upper Silesian conurbation, is one of the big college towns of Poland, with more than twenty thousand students and the Silesian University of Technology at its centre.

The Gliwice people remember is full of contrasts. The Old Town, one of the oldest in Upper Silesia, still keeps its medieval core inside the Gliwickie Mury Obronne, close to the Zamek Piastowski w Gliwicach and the Kościół świętego Bartłomieja. The Palmiarnia Miejska offers a warm green escape. And on the edge of town stands the Radio Tower, thought to be the tallest wooden structure in the world, where the Gleiwitz incident took place just before the Second World War. It now houses the Muzeum Historii Radia i Sztuki Mediów – Radiostacja Gliwice.

The city has changed its trade, too, from steelworks and coal to cars and machines, and once even hosted the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. If Gliwice is where you studied, fell in love or grew up, you will find your own corner of it on the map, somewhere between the tower and the market square.