Świętokrzyski

Holy Cross National Park was created in 1950 in central Poland and protects the central part of the Holy Cross Mountains, in particular the Łysogóry range. It is one of the oldest Polish national parks and its value starts from the geology: these mountains are heavily eroded remains of a Palaeozoic range, folded hundreds of millions of years ago, which makes them one of the oldest mountain structures in Europe. Their summits, rounded and of modest altitude, barely exceed 600 metres.

Their most characteristic phenomenon is the gołoborza: extensive rivers of bare quartzite blocks running down the slopes without tree cover, formed by the shattering of the rock during the periglacial periods of the Quaternary, when the ice front lay nearby and the freeze-thaw cycles broke the rock apart. They are a record of that climate and hold specialised communities of lichens and mosses.

The forest cover is dominated by fir woods, which here reach one of their most westerly and northerly expressions in this form, mixed with beech and oak woods. The summit of Łysa Góra, the Bald Mountain, is a place laden with history: it holds the Benedictine monastery of Święty Krzyż, founded in the twelfth century, and popular tradition associates it with gatherings of witches, a folklore that has given the mountain its name. The wildlife is that of Polish temperate woodland, with red deer, wild boar, wolf and a forest birdlife tied to the mature fir stands.