Every design for Jaworzno

Did you grow up in a town that sits in Silesia on paper but answers to Lesser Poland in spirit? Jaworzno has lived with that double identity ever since it joined the Silesian Voivodeship, having been tied to Kraków from its foundation until the nineteen-seventies. Even its name belongs to the landscape: it comes from the jawor, the sycamore maple that once grew thickly around here.

Ask anyone from Jaworzno where they live and the answer is rarely just the city. It is a district, often a former village or small town in its own right, separated from the next by a belt of green, and that patchwork of many places held together shapes how people talk about home. The town has a stubborn streak, too: it walked away from the Upper Silesian metropolitan union over worries about its public transport. Summer weekends mean the water at Sosina or Zalew Łęg, or a slow walk under the trees of Arboretum Park Gródek.

In the centre stands the Kolegiata pw. Świętych Wojciecha i Katarzyny, while the Dawny Gmach Gwarectwa Jaworznickiego and the old narrow-gauge engine shed recall the mines. Out at the edge of town the Przemsza bends past the corner where three empires once met.