Katowice
— — the coal city that turned into a music city.
Not only on a wall.
“Katowice sits in the middle of the Silesian metropolitan area, a dense cluster of towns that grew up around the coal seams of the nineteenth century. The brick workers' housing at Nikiszowiec is still lived in, its courtyards laid out around a single church and a single square. In the city centre the saucer-shaped Spodek arena and the dark glass of the new concert hall mark the second life of the place, after the mines closed. UNESCO named Katowice a City of Music in 2015. The two periods sit alongside each other without arguing. from the studio
Katowice, 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.
Katowice is the capital of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland, with a population of about 280,000 and a wider metropolitan area, the Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia, of more than two million. The city sits on the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, at the eastern edge of the historic region of Upper Silesia. Industrial development from the mid-nineteenth century, first under Prussia and then Germany before 1922, turned a village called Kattowitz into one of central Europe's most important coal and steel centres. UNESCO designated Katowice a Creative City of Music in 2015, recognising its conservatoire and contemporary music scene.
Nikiszowiec, the workers' housing estate built between 1908 and 1918 by Emil and Georg Zillmann for the Giesche coal company, remains the city's signature ensemble. Nine blocks of red brick housing wrap around interior courtyards, a single parish church, and the Wilson Shaft Gallery in the converted colliery next door. The estate was recognised as a Polish Historic Monument in 2011. In the city centre, the Spodek arena, opened in 1971 and shaped like a flying saucer, was joined in the 2010s by the NOSPR concert hall designed by Tomasz Konior and by the new building of the Silesian Museum on the grounds of the former Katowice colliery.
Intercity trains from Kraków reach Katowice in just over an hour, and from Warsaw in about two hours and forty minutes. The post-industrial culture zone — Spodek, NOSPR, the Silesian Museum, and the International Congress Centre — sits within a short walk of each other on the grounds of the old Katowice mine. Nikiszowiec lies four kilometres east of the centre, reachable by tram or bus, and is best walked on a clear weekend morning when the bakery and the museum on the corner square are open. Katowice hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP24, in December 2018.