Jelenia Góra Town Trail – the long route

The Duży Jeleniogórski Trakt Śródmiejski – the Grand Jelenia Góra Town Trail – is a municipal heritage route through Cieplice, Sobieszów and Jagniątków, from the spa to the house of a Nobel laureate below the Karkonosze mountains. Locally it is simply the Duży Trakt, the Long Trail. Below: point by point, in walking order.

The long route: Cieplice, Sobieszów, Jagniątków

Fifteen points spread over some fifteen kilometres. It starts in Cieplice, passes the spa and both parks, then heads for Sobieszów below Chojnik Castle and ends in Jagniątków, in the house of Gerhart Hauptmann.

I have added two places the city never marked: the Grunwald Swords on ul. Cervi and the Oak of Peace in Jagniątków. Both lie exactly on the way and both have a story – in the list below they are marked as extra points.

1. Church of the Saviour Cieplice The Lutherans wrote to the king in December 1741 and had his consent within two weeks.
2. Schaffgotsch Palace Cieplice A palace with an 81-metre facade, where the family library grew because a 1733 deed said it must.
3. Gallery and Spa Animation Theatre Cieplice A Classicist theatre where spa guests and the Schaffgotsches themselves performed, and a Gallery with a reading room and a cigar lounge.
4. Norwegian Pavilion Cieplice A copy of a Norwegian restaurant near Oslo, built by the owner of a paper machine factory.
5. Grunwald Swords on ul. Cervi Cieplice extra point Wooden swords from 1967 stand on the base of a German war memorial from the interwar years.
6. Drinking fountain Cieplice A sculpted nymph and, at her feet, water from a borehole 2,002.5 metres deep at 87 degrees.
7. Church of St John the Baptist Cieplice A single-nave church with no tower, and inside an altarpiece attributed to Willmann, eight side altars and the Schaffgotsch crypt beneath the chancel.
8. The Long House Cieplice The oldest building of the spa, with roots in the 13th century.
9. Marysieńka Spring Museum Cieplice A borehole a hundred and seventy years old, reaching 167 metres down.
10. Graduation tower Cieplice A twenty-metre graduation tower above the Kamienna, opened in 2019.
11. Natural History Museum Cieplice The Schaffgotsch collection in a former Cistercian monastery: hummingbirds, butterflies and the birds of Silesia.
12. Church of the Sacred Heart Sobieszów Built in 1744 for Protestants so that it could be turned into a department store if need be.
13. Sobieszów Palace and the National Park centre Sobieszów Built in 1705–1712, when burnt-out Chojnik was no longer fit to live in.
14. Church of St Martin Sobieszów The oldest building in Sobieszów, with a parish attested in the 14th century.
15. Chojnik Castle Sobieszów Gothic ruins on a 627-metre peak above Sobieszów, with a viewing tower and a panorama of the Karkonosze.
16. The Oak of Peace Jagniątków extra point An oak planted at the end of the Franco-Prussian war.
17. Gerhart Hauptmann's House Jagniątków The Wiesenstein villa of 1900–1901: a Nobel laureate's house on a granite rock, a hall painted over eight months, and a post-war children's holiday centre.

The route in numbers

• Length: 14.57 km
• Total ascent: 498 m
• Elevation: 340–620 m a.s.l.

Map of the trail

The track runs from Plac Piastowski in Cieplice to Gerhart Hauptmann’s house in Jagniątków: 14.57 km, 340 to 620 m above sea level, with about +510 m of ascent. The first half is flat and urban; the second goes into the forest – the climb to Chojnik and the stretch through the Karkonosze foothills is the mountain part of the route, although the final section follows the streets of Jagniątków.

Download the GPX track (89 KB) For your phone or watch – the file holds the whole route, in walking order.

In Jagniątków the track differs from the original route at the very end. The trail itself runs a little further from Kubuś – the little deer by the church – while in this track the last half kilometre before Hauptmann’s house is laid out so that you pass the figurine on the way. If you want the original exactly, simply do not turn off.

You do not have to walk it in one go. It falls naturally into two halves: the Cieplice part (points 1–10, 6.5 km, flat, an easy stroll) and the Sobieszów – Jagniątków part (points 11–15, 8 km, with the climb to the castle). Each can be started from a bus stop.

The two halves differ in more than the profile. The Cieplice one follows streets and park avenues, while the Sobieszów – Jagniątków part runs almost entirely along waymarked hiking trails – the same marks you see painted on the trees. In practice you do not need to watch the map on that half: just follow the waymarks.

The colours in order:

• up to Chojnik – red. This is the original line of the trail: gentler, on a cobbled road. If you prefer it shorter and steeper, take the black trail past the Zbójeckie Skały rocks – but that is a variant, not the trail itself.
• down from the castle – yellow, then green to Jagniątków, as far as the Oak of Peace.
• from the Oak of Peace – blue, almost to Gerhart Hauptmann’s door.

The trail also works the other way round – from Jagniątków to Cieplice. You then start at the highest point: from Jagniątków over Chojnik you descend to Sobieszów, and from there to Cieplice it is flat, ending with a walk through the spa district. On the Jagniątków – Sobieszów section you follow waymarked hiking trails, which of course work both ways – you just read the colours in reverse: blue to the Oak of Peace, green and yellow up to the castle, red down to Sobieszów.

Where the trail came from

The trail was laid out by the city and described on boards at the sites. The first version had fewer points than today’s – a 2017 brochure listed ten. The later extension was never matched by a full replacement of the signs on the ground.

And the signs are disappearing. At Chojnik Castle, where the list of trail points used to hang, there is now a board about the monument itself (as of August 2026). Out in the field you can no longer count on finding all the points listed in one place.

This is the longer of the two branches of the Jelenia Góra town trail. The shorter one, the Mały Jeleniogórski Trakt Śródmiejski, loops around the old town and fits into an hour’s walk – I will describe it separately.

The trail and the Deer Trail

Two different things that go well together. The town trail leads past monuments, while the Deer Trail leads past sculptures scattered across the city – and six of the little deer stand right on this route:

• Ciepliczanka i Zdrój – a pair on a bench in front of the Schaffgotsch Palace, a few dozen metres from the start.
• Lalkarz – the puppeteer, in front of the Spa Animation Theatre.
• Rzemiosław – with an easel and brush, by the School of Artistic Crafts in Cieplice. Every figurine on the Deer Trail was made in that school, so this one is at home.
• Szóstek – the wildlife photographer, in front of Primary School no. 6, a little further towards Sobieszów.
• Bolko III – a duke with sword and shield, in Sobieszów in front of the palace housing the National Park centre, at the foot of Chojnik hill. From there it is still over three kilometres of trail and 260 metres of climbing to the castle itself.
• Kubuś – the deer on a mug by the church in Jagniątków, just before the finish.

The start itself is right beside a seventh one: Norwidek stands in front of the Norwid secondary school, under two hundred metres from the trail’s first point.