Gliwice
— a wooden tower the war began beside.
Not only on a wall.
“The wooden radio tower on the northern edge of Gliwice still stands. 111 metres of pine and larch, joined with brass bolts, the tallest wooden tower in the world. On the night of 31 August 1939, a staged broadcast from this transmitter was used as the pretext for the invasion of Poland the next morning. The tower has held the Silesian sky for nearly a century.
Gliwice, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Gliwice sits in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, about 30 kilometres west of Katowice, on the Kłodnica river. The city has roots in the 13th century and a population of around 175,000. It was known as Gleiwitz under German administration until 1945. The old market square holds a Renaissance town hall and the Gothic St. Bartholomew's church. The 14th-century Piast Castle, raised under the dukes of Opole, now houses the city museum. Gliwice is a stop on the Polish industrial-heritage trail.
The Gliwice radio tower stands on Tarnogórska Street on the northern edge of the city. It rises 111 metres in pine and larch beams, joined with brass bolts to avoid interference with the broadcast signal, and remains the tallest wooden tower in the world. Built by the German broadcaster in 1935, it carried medium-wave transmissions across Upper Silesia until conversion to a mobile-network relay in the 1990s. A small museum at the base traces the events of 31 August 1939.
On the evening of 31 August 1939, SS officers in Polish uniforms entered the transmitter station, fired shots, and broadcast a short message in Polish. A dead body, code-named Konserve, was left at the scene. The next morning Germany invaded Poland and cited the Gleiwitz incident among the provocations. The Second World War in Europe began the morning after that broadcast. The tower has stood through every year since. The museum at its base opens to visitors from spring through autumn.