Metravel city quest
City Nowa Slupia: free walking route “Łysa Góra quest: the mountain of witches and the Holy Cross” along the sights. 10 points. Approximately 3 h 30 min
If Poland has a mountain spoken of in whispers, this is it. Łysiec, Łysa Góra, Święty Krzyż: three names for one summit, each with a story.
Long before Christianity, the mountain held a pagan sanctuary. A stone rampart almost a kilometre and a half long encircled the summit. Later chroniclers recorded worship here of deities named Łada, Boda and Leli. The church fought that memory in its own way. Folk tradition made the mountain a place where witches from all around flew at night on broomsticks, or sometimes shovels, to feast with the devil until the first cockcrow. Łysa Góra is Poland's best-known witches' sabbath site.
In the 12th century, a Benedictine monastery arose on the summit. Duke Władysław Łokietek gave it fragments of the wood of the Holy Cross. The mountain, then the whole range, gained a new name: Świętokrzyskie Mountains, the Mountains of the Holy Cross. Kings climbed here on foot; Jagiełło came to pray before the Battle of Grunwald.
You will follow kings and pilgrims from Nowa Słupia's market square past the petrified pilgrim Emeryk, who moves a grain of sand towards the summit each year: when he arrives, the world will end. Then climb the Royal Road through the pagan rampart to the basilica's relic, the crypt with a prince's mummy and the stone river said to have been dropped on the slope by devils.
This route is a real ascent: around two kilometres uphill, gaining almost three hundred metres, followed by summit stops. Wear comfortable footwear and bring water. National park entry is paid, around 11 złoty, with tickets at the entrance or online. We start at Nowa Słupia's market square.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
For centuries, this little town at the mountain's foot lived from pilgrims. Those heading for the Holy Cross relic rested, prayed and stocked up on bread here.
Świętokrzyska Street ends at the forest's edge, where the national park, ticket office and blue-marked uphill trail begin. Here, left of the road on a heap of boulders, the knight from the market stands frozen.
The climb begins at Emeryk: Droga Królewska, the Royal Road, the monastery's oldest approach. Its name is deserved.
Just below the summit, the path crosses a strange ridge visible through the forest: a long bank of broken quartzite, reaching two or three metres high in places. People rather than nature made it.
Here is the summit and the monastery that changed the mountain's name. Duke Bolesław Wrymouth built the first Romanesque church here between 1102 and 1138, inviting Benedictines.
The chapel adjoining the basilica drew kings here. Mikołaj Oleśnicki and his wife Zofia built it in 1614–1620.
Beneath the church lies a place nobody entered for two hundred years. After the 1777 fire and the abbey's dissolution, the underground chambers were closed, reopening to visitors only in 2007.
Below the basilica, a six-metre plague cross rises above the stone enclosure. Steel sections form its frame, filled with pale onyx bearing Latin letters, the initial words of an old prayer against epidemics.
Walk a couple of hundred metres west from the monastery and the Middle Ages abruptly become the 20th century. A 157-metre reinforced-concrete shaft rises above the forest: the Święty Krzyż radio and television tower, Poland's tallest television tower.
The final stop is just beyond the tower on the northern slope. Forest suddenly opens onto a stone river: an immense treeless scree of angular blocks flowing downhill.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.