Ojcowski

Ojców National Park was created in 1956 some twenty kilometres north-west of Kraków and is, at little more than 21 km², the smallest of the Polish national parks. It protects the upper reach of the valley of the river Prądnik, cut into the Jurassic limestones of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland.

The result is a concentrated karst landscape: a narrow valley of vertical white walls, studded with spires and isolated monoliths that erosion has gradually singled out, among them the famous Maczuga Herkulesa, or Hercules' Club, a limestone column some twenty-five metres high. The subsoil is riddled with more than four hundred caves and shafts, some open to visitors, such as King Łokietek's Cave or the Dark Cave, which have also yielded important Palaeolithic sites.

Those cavities hold colonies of bats of several species, which are one of the park's main faunal assets and its symbol. The combination of contrasting aspects in a narrow valley generates great botanical diversity in a small space, with thermophilous vegetation on the sunny slopes and shade communities on the cold ones; the Ojców birch, a rare taxon described in this valley, is one of its emblems. The built heritage completes the picture: the park contains the ruins of Ojców castle and, on a crag, the Renaissance castle of Pieskowa Skała, both part of the system of fortresses known as the Eagles' Nests.