Góry Świętokrzyskie aka Holy Cross Mountains

Holy Cross mountains is a low mountain range, the oldest mountains of Poland and at the same time the lowest ones in Poland.

https://bi.im-g.pl/im/68/23/15/z22163560IBG,Lysica.jpg

They lay in the way from Warsaw(capital) to Cracow(former capital aka „cultural capital of Poland”).

https://i.imgur.com/Pr0iTUv.png

Because of location they seem to be kind of forgotten comparing to those cities still there is something to see, mostly the nature. There is a whole bunch of trails, at one of them you can see the oldest oaks in the country, the most popular for sure called „dąb Bartek” .

https://i.imgur.com/Jfw0GHv.png

The name of the mountains, even whole district within country comes from the monastery on Łysa Góra(second tallest mountain in the range) where is stored little piece of Holy Cross(at least that's what they tell)

https://i.imgur.com/Cd14P9N.jpg


Part of the mountains are secured as Świętokrzyski National Park, within it’s area there is the highest mountain of the range called Łysica. One of the most characteristic landmark in this park are stone runs

https://i.imgur.com/TF1Ihu9.png

https://live.staticflickr.com/6041/6...a16c9798_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/4850/3...bb75dff7_k.jpg



The most important city in the range of Holy Cross mountains as well as the Holy Cross voivodeship is Kielce.
Another touristically worth city in the range of Holy Cross mountains is Chęciny and it’s closest area

I plan to make separate posts about each city later

https://i.imgur.com/HdM7d40.png

According to legend the name of city comes from the tusks of boar fund by prince Mieszko(the one that got baptized Poland), there is still boar monument

https://i.imgur.com/jUARat3.png

Since the beginning of city, it was a property of Cracowian bishops. Then it didn’t play a big role in the region. It’s progress started with mining of copper, iron and lead ores in 15th century. In 19th century Kielce began to have a status of the main city in administrational district. In Interwar period the city was still in progress as it was one of the cities of Central Industrial Region and one of the favourite cities of Józef Piłsudski. Now the city is overwhelmed by influence of Cracow where many young people decide to move because of lack of investitions in the city etc

As the city lays in Holy Cross mountains it has plenty of nature aro ud but also within the city borders. The most known natural place of Kielce is nature reserve „Kadzielnia” with fancy rock you can see on the left in the picture below. There are some caves as well.

https://i.imgur.com/nHVVGe7.png

Going into architecture of the city, the main representative street with plenty of building from 19th and beginning of 20th century is Henryk Sienkiewicz Street

https://i.imgur.com/yhct1eK.png

https://i.imgur.com/8sPzJji.png

https://i.imgur.com/UBytrFF.png

The most known building of Kielce is Palace of Cracowian Bishops from 17th century. As the name suggests it used to be residence of Cracowian Bishops.

https://i.imgur.com/4nre6ne.png

https://i.imgur.com/9eyrjEH.png

Other representative place is the main square(unfortunatelly it has disease called „lack of green” like many Polish squares recently…)

https://i.imgur.com/tyPRPuv.png

And now probably most characteristic even though not much representative bus stadion of Kielce with a UFO on it

https://i.imgur.com/s8U3dmS.png

The most fancy place I found during my short and poor research is Museum of Toys. It has many old toys like dolls, cars, models of ships, planes etc but also accessories like toy costumes

https://i.imgur.com/OC45MQ0.png

https://i.imgur.com/VtplAFi.png


Of course there is a bunch of churches, catherdal and other old buildings but I wanted to describe the city just in 1 post which is pretty hard task.