Jura Natural and Cultural Heritage Centre

The Jura Natural and Cultural Heritage Centre (Centrum Dziedzictwa Przyrodniczego i Kulturowego Jury) is a tourist and educational centre in Podlesice in Kroczyce municipality, located by provincial road no. 792, in the Eagles’ Nests Landscape Park. It lies right next to Zborów Hill and is a natural starting point for visiting the reserve and Głęboka Cave. It is run by the Natural and Cultural Heritage Centre Foundation.

What the centre comprises

The complex consists of a car park, educational buildings, a ticket office selling admission tickets to the Zborów Hill nature reserve and to Głęboka Cave, a tourist information point, a lapidarium, a multimedia conference room hosting workshops, symposia, film screenings and lectures, an educational farmstead and educational boards.

The educational farmstead shows traditional farm equipment and photographs presenting the landscape of Zborów Hill several decades ago. The centre is adapted for people with disabilities.

Exhibitions in the buildings

In the centre’s buildings, on more than 200 m², there are exhibitions on research carried out in the region: entomological, palaeontological and archaeological. The centre performs educational, scientific, documentation, exhibition and publishing functions. The exhibitions are indoors, so a visit does not depend on the weather.

Lapidarium of Jurassic rocks

The lapidarium is an exhibition of typical rocks of the Kraków-Wieluń Upland. Most of them are blocks of Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian) limestone, which formed in a shallow sea about 163-157 million years ago. There are also a block of Devonian dolomite, a Permian igneous rock, siderite concretions and sandy limestones of the Middle Jurassic. Two blocks have karst sculpting, and a separate granite erratic boulder carried by the glaciers of Scandinavia lies on its own.

Zborów Hill and the surroundings

The Zborów Hill nature reserve lies in the Natura 2000 area Kroczyce Refuge and in the Eagles’ Nests Landscape Park. It is formed by numerous limestone outcrops, often several dozen metres high, with caves, including Głęboka Cave, which is open to tourists. It is also one of the most important areas in Poland for rock climbing and caving.

Further on in the Jura lie castles: Morsko Castle, about 2.6 km from the centre, and Bobolice Castle, about 5 km.

Practical information

• Address: Jaskiniowa 41, Podlesice.
• The centre is open seasonally, from April to October. Current opening hours are listed on the centre’s website.
• At the centre you can buy admission tickets to the Zborów Hill reserve and to Głęboka Cave. The rules for entering the reserve are on the website podlesice.org.pl.
• Next to it there is a car park and a tourist information point.