Every design for Żory

On the Rybnik Plateau, where the Ruda river runs between Rybnik and Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Żory has spent centuries holding its own against bigger neighbours. It counts itself among the oldest towns in Silesia, first recorded on the road from Cieszyn to Kraków, and belongs to the Rybnik Coal District, though today trade, services and logistics set the pace far more than mining does. Even the name is a matter of local debate: one theory traces it to the burning of forests to clear land for the first settlers, another to the Polish word for a crane.

The Kościół pw. Świętych Apostołów Filipa i Jakuba anchors the centre and its long memory. The Muzeum Ognia, a museum of fire, sits neatly beside that first theory about the name, while the Pałac w Baranowicach and the Wieża gichtowa dawnej huty Waleska, the blast-furnace tower of a former ironworks, show two very different sides of the surrounding land. Villages once listed in medieval Latin documents – Rój, Rogoźna, Rowień, Brodek – now simply make up the town.

For anyone who grew up here, the streets between them still lead home, whichever way you come in.