Mały Jeleniogórski Trakt Śródmiejski – the city centre route

The Mały Jeleniogórski Trakt Śródmiejski, which the city renders in English as The Minor Jelenia Góra City Centre Route, is the shorter of the town’s two heritage trails – the one that never leaves the centre. Twelve stops, 3.7 kilometres, an afternoon’s walk.

The twelve stops

The route starts outside the old town, on Wzgórze Krzywoustego (Boleslaus Hill), drops into the city along the line of the former walls, rounds them from the west past both surviving gate towers, crosses the Town Hall Square, leaves eastwards through the Wojanowska Gate and then turns south – to the theatre, the Karkonosze Museum and finally to Wzgórze Kościuszki, where the underground is.

The order is the city’s own, matching the numbers on the information boards. On the long trail I resequenced the stops into walking order, because following the numbers there cost half a kilometre of backtracking. Here there is no need: the whole thing fits into a few blocks, and the only step back – from the walls on ul. Jelenia to the Castle Gate Tower – is three hundred metres.

The last stop, Time Gates, joined the trail later than the rest: the underground opened at the end of 2018, a year after the city brochure came out. That is why older material stops at the museum.

1. View Tower “Grzybek” The “Grzybek” lookout tower on the hill above the town, where a castle stood until the fifteenth century.
2. Ramparts A double wall, a dry moat a dozen metres wide, three gates and dozens of towers.
3. The Castle Tower All that is left of the Castle Gate.
4. Grodzka Tower A fifteenth-century tower turned into flats – which is why it survived.
5. Town Hall and Town Hall Square A town hall of 1744–1747, built after the old tower collapsed and killed people.
6. The Minor Basilica of Saint Erasmus and St Pancras The parish church: built over three generations from 1380, a vault resting on carved masks, a portal that was once the main entrance, and epitaphs set into the walls.
7. Tower, St. Anne's Chapel and Wojanowska Gate A tower of 1480, a chapel in a bastion with arrowslits, and a gate carted off to the barracks in 1869 and fitted into their entrance.
8. Orthodox church of St. Peter and Paul A Baroque church of 1738 on the foundations of a chapel burned in the Thirty Years’ War.
9. Church of Grace (Elevation of the Holy Cross) Built after the Treaty of Altranstädt of 1707, modelled on a Stockholm church, for four thousand seated worshippers.
10. Cyprian Kamil Norwid Theatre A 1904 building paid for by public subscription.
11. The Karkonosze Museum A museum built in 1914 specifically for its collections: over 9,000 pieces of glass, a weaver’s cottage beside the building, and the crates of Matejko’s paintings.
12. Time Gates – Underground of Jelenia Góra A brewer cut beer cellars here in 1852–1853, the war enlarged them into a shelter, then came mushrooms and a disco.

The route in numbers

• Length: 3.67 km
• Total ascent: 29 m
• Elevation: 330–370 m a.s.l.

Map of the route

From Wzgórze Krzywoustego to the Time Gates underground below Wzgórze Kościuszki: 3.67 km, about 49 minutes of walking, with a modest climb at each end. With sightseeing it fills a day, because five of the stops can be entered.

Download the GPX track (25 KB) For your phone or watch – the whole route, in walking order.

Three quarters of this trail is one story

Stops two to seven are the same structure seen in pieces: the town walls. The city was girdled by a double ring with a dry moat, and what is left of it is three buildings and the shape of the streets. The Castle Gate Tower, the Grodzka Tower and the Wojanowska Tower and Gate are still standing because, in the nineteenth century, somebody dug their heels in.

That is why it is worth starting at stop two, if only to make sense of the rest. Without it the towers are just three old towers, rather than what survives of a system.

Where you can go inside

Most of the stops are seen from the outside. Five can be entered, and those five decide how long the trail takes:

• The Castle Gate Tower – viewing terrace, free entry, seasonal opening hours.
• The Minor Basilica of St Erasmus and St Pancras and the Church of Grace – both are working churches; the Church of Grace has set visiting hours and charges admission.
• The Karkonosze Museum – ticketed, closed on Mondays.
• Time Gates – guided groups entering at fixed times.

I am not copying out opening hours and prices, because they change – each of these places publishes its own. One thing is worth knowing in advance: the Time Gates tunnels stay at about seven degrees all year.

Where the trail comes from

The route was laid out by the city and marked with boards at each stop. The names and numbering used here come from the city’s own trail map, 2024 edition.

This is the shorter of the two threads. The longer one, the Duży Jeleniogórski Trakt Śródmiejski, runs through Cieplice, Sobieszów and Jagniątków and is well over a dozen kilometres. The two do not meet: this one stays in the centre, the other begins seven kilometres away.

The trail and the Deer Trail

Two different things that go well together. This route is about monuments; the Deer Trail is about the little bronze stags scattered around the city. The centre has the most of them: seventeen of the twenty-nine. Walking this route, you pass them without looking.

The map shows exactly where they are, and the app is the easiest guide: it notices by itself that you are standing next to one.