Today we left Katowice early and headed out to see Ogrodzieniec Castle (Zamek Ogrodzieniec). This is a castle ruin just outside Katowice, built on top of Castle Mountain, a 516m tall hill. This classifies the castle as one of the 'Eagle-Nest' castles, being one that is built on a tall area in the Polish Jura area.
The area was first fortified in the 12th century, and the current castle was built in the 14th century for the Włodek Sulima family. The castle used existing rock structures to incorporate into the walls.
The castle was sold in 1470 and passed through several hands before being owned by the Męciński family in 1695. The Swedes, under King Charles XII, burnt most of the castle down in 1702. The castle was never rebuilt and the ruins changed hands, often becoming a source of material for other building projects. After WW II the castle was nationalized and was preserved as a tourist attraction.
The castle ruins were used in many shows such as Janosik, Spellbinder, The Knight, The Revenge and The Witcher.
The area around the castle was filled with amusements, such as a science park, miniature village and a large number of ice-cream stalls. These were all closed for the off season and construction work was going on at the castle. The weather was cold and damp, but with no rain, luckily. We parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up towards the ruins
Ogrodzieniec Castle formed an impressive sight on the rocks at the top of the hill. Despite being a ruin, it still retained its imposing look:
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| Entrance to the courtyard |
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| The side of the ruin incorporating the natural rock |
From the main courtyard we headed up into the ruins: and into the gatehouse tower:
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| The Black Dog of Ogrodzieniec - said to prowl the courtyard dragging its chain. Folklore claim it is the soul of the Castellan of Krakow, Stanisław Warszycki, who apparently also haunts Dańków Castle as a headless horseman. |
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| Original coat-of-arms over the gatehouse |
Once inside we came to the castle courtyard, which empty except for workers doing repairs. It looked like this area might be a bit more busy during the tourist season.
The courtyard also lead to what looked to be the remains of a kitchen area and a few fenced-off sections such as dungeon and what appeared to be a well.
Passing through to the next chamber we came across a spiral staircase that led upstairs to a viewing area:
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| View from the platform |
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| Kitchen |
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| The fog started to roll in |
The next section was the Lord's Chamber and library
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| Library |
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| View back over the courtyard |
The next big room was the Kredencerska Dining Room, with the imposing Kredencerska tower in the corner:
Despite the fog, the view was the tower was pretty impressive (to be honest the fog made it much cooler):
Heading down the tower we came to the Knight Chambers:
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| A well placed cannon if you want to blow up the inside of your own walls... |
Next stop was down a thin passage and out into the Hen's Foot:
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| A firing point |
From the Hen's Foot, we headed to the Back Yard and climbed the wooden steps to the top
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| Cam found the pillory - pity I didn't have any tomatoes to throw |
After climbing the wooden stairs, we continued into the Bastion Beluard and around the walls before heading back down:
The prison tower (above) was pretty impressive. We passed it to cross the treasury, where preservation works were going on... Well we assumed that they were preservation works - a guy in a worker's uniform was sitting in a gap in the wall throwing stones down into the room below. He might have been vandalizing it, or stuck I guess...
After exiting the castle we headed across to the other entrance we had seen between the rocks on the other side of the outside courtyard. It was amazing how the entrance was created using the natural rock formations. The view back towards the castle in the fog was also amazing:
When we finished up at the fort we headed back for our drive into Kraków. On the way we got stuck behind a farmer's protest.
The protest, which has been spread throughout Europe, particularly Poland and France, is about competition from non-European Union countries such as Ukraine. The protest is also over the new EU Green Deal has put limits on chemicals and greenhouse gas creation which will reduce production and income. The protests had blocked roads, driven slow chains of tractors down main highways and created trains of tractors honking and driving through major cities. (Al-Jazeera New Acticle about the protests)
The protest we passed was a slow moving train of tractors blocking one lane of the main highway into Krakow, hung with flags and banners:
This created a bit of a delay, but we were not in any great rush. After checking in and finding parking (there was short term parking outside the apartment, but for longer term we needed to go about 250m away to a very dodgy looking carpark - which ended up being run by a very friendly old Polish man who spoke about 4 words of English).
The kids were tired and opted to have a rest while Kris and I went for a quick walk to try to find some food for dinner. It started raining just after we left the apartment and we got soaked, but after about half an hour the rain stopped and by the time we got back to the apartment we were already dry.
Our walk took us to Wawel Castle (more on that on Day 6) and of course we had to stop for one of Kraków's famous chimney cakes:
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| Wawel Castle |
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| Making the Chimney Cakes |
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| Kris had plum jam and I had white chocolate and coconut. |
After we finally found what we were looking for dinner, we headed back to the apartment for an early night as we had a big day planned.
Our apartment was the interestingly named "Central Krak Apartments":
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