Every design for Knurów

Knurów is known for coal. The first mine shaft opened here in 1904, a second mine followed at Szczygłowice in 1961, and the old private village grew into a mining community so fast that it only became a town in 1951. It is unusual on paper, too: one of the largest Polish towns that is not a county seat, and the only one of them led by a president rather than a mayor.

For many families the memories run underground and back up again: shifts at the mine, and the Izba Tradycji KWK Knurów that keeps those stories. Knurów lived through the Silesian Uprisings and returned to Poland after the 1921 plebiscite; the Pomnik Powstańców Śląskich recalls that time. Yet daily life is greener than the word 'mining' suggests. Mixed forest covers more than a third of the town, the Bierawka runs along its south-western edge, and parts of it lie within a landscape park.

Picture the spoil heaps at Szczygłowice on the skyline and, closer in, the Park im. Floriana Ogana and the Tężnia Solankowa, where the town comes to breathe.