Kowary Miniature Park

The Park Miniatur Zabytkow Dolnego Slaska at Kowary holds around sixty models at 1:25 scale of the region's buildings: the Ksiaz and Czocha castles, the peace churches of Swidnica and Jawor, the Krzeszow abbey, the Wang church, Wroclaw's town hall and cathedral, and a set of palaces from the Jelenia Gora valley. The models are detailed and outdoors in a landscaped garden with the Karkonosze behind, which gives the whole thing a reasonable setting rather than a car park. What lifts it above the usual miniature park is that several of the originals are gone or ruinous - buildings destroyed in 1945 or demolished afterwards have been modelled from photographs and drawings, so the park is in part a record of what Lower Silesia lost. There is a second miniature park of technical monuments in the town. Kowary itself was a uranium and iron mining town and one of the mines is open as an attraction.

What you actually see

• About sixty models at 1:25 - castles, churches and palaces of Lower Silesia.
• Buildings that no longer exist - reconstructed at scale from photographs.
• A landscaped setting - with the Karkonosze ridge behind the garden.
• A second technical park - models of industrial monuments in the same town.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Open seasonally and closed in winter. It is outdoors, so wet weather ruins it. It is a family attraction rather than a scholarly one, though the lost-buildings element is genuinely interesting.

Nearby

Karpacz and the Wang church are eight kilometres away; Jelenia Gora is west.