Smoleń Nature Reserve

The Smoleń Nature Reserve covers Castle Hill (Góra Zamkowa) in the village of Smoleń in the municipality of Pilica, a hill with the ruins of a medieval castle. It covers 4.32 ha and lies within the Trail of the Eagles' Nests Landscape Park. It protects a rocky limestone hill overgrown with forest, not the castle itself, which we describe separately: Smoleń Castle stands on the top of the same hill.

What the hill is made of

The hill is made of Jurassic limestone, in which there are outcrops, fissures and hollows. The reserve was established by an order of the Minister of Forestry and the Timber Industry of 25 November 1959, and the whole area was placed under strict protection.

Vegetation

The slopes are covered by a beech-hornbeam-larch forest in which Sudeten beech forest predominates. About 160 species of vascular plants and about 60 species of mosses have been counted in the reserve. Among the more valuable plants growing here are whorled Solomon's seal, asarabacca, lady's slipper orchid, sweet woodruff, snowdrop, mezereon and nine-leaved toothwort, and among ferns green spleenwort and narrow buckler fern.

Natural monuments

From Castle Hill you can see natural monuments of living nature: a small-leaved lime with a trunk circumference at breast height of over 3 m, a fine ash tree, and an avenue of limes, sycamores and ashes. Natural monuments also include the limestone outcrops Wypaleniec, Zawisza, Skała Gaj, Symulowa Skała in Złożeniec and Pośrednica in Smoleń.

Practical information

• Place: Smoleń, Pilica municipality, Zawiercie County.
• A path in the form of a closed loop with information boards runs around the whole of Castle Hill.
• The area is under strict protection, so keep only to the marked path and follow the signs.
• Nearby is also the Ruskie Góry Nature Reserve.