Audioguides Katowice

Katowice spent most of its existence as a Prussian mining town, then a Polish industrial powerhouse, then briefly -- for three humiliating years in the 1950s -- a city called Stalinogród. It shed that last name in 1956, and has spent the decades since shedding the others too. The coal mines are museums now, and the city that once coughed soot now holds UNESCO status as a City of Music, hosting the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in a purpose-built concert hall that opened in 2014.

The thing most visitors don't expect is the architecture.

There is no medieval old town -- the city grew too fast and too industrial for that -- but there is the Spodek, a tensegrity-roofed arena from 1971 that looks like a flying saucer landed between the motorway and the train station. There is the Cathedral of Christ the King, built between 1927 and 1955 and still one of Poland's largest. And there is Nikiszowiec, a former miners' settlement of red-brick terraces that has quietly become one of the most photographed neighborhoods in Silesia, its art galleries tucked between the original company housing blocks.