Solo: Nowa Ruda

Nowa Ruda on your own: hills with towers, three museums, chapels and libraries. Twelve places for a calm outing alone without a plan.

Where to go alone for views in Nowa Ruda

Start with All Saints Hill, a 648-metre summit in the Włodzickie Hills. On top stands a stone tower from 1913 of red sandstone, about 15 metres tall. The second peak, St. Anne's Hill, is 647 metres high and rises in the southern part of town. Below the top stand a Baroque church of St. Anne from the 17th century and three plague chapels from the 1680 epidemic. At the very summit waits a historic lookout tower of local sandstone, one of a few such towers in the Central Sudetes. All four places carry the "Solo" and "Great views" tags.

Going alone has its advantages: nobody sets the pace, and at the tower you stay as long as you like. The 1913 tower replaced a wooden mini-tower from 1889, only 2.8 metres high. The foundation stone for the stone building was laid on 12 June 1913, and the money came from the Słupiec section of the Kłodzko Mountain Society. On the summit of All Saints Hill you will also find a viewpoint.

Which museums suit sightseeing without company?

Three, and each carries the "Solo" tag. The Mining Museum grew out of an idea from 1992, built on the training adit of the Mining School Complex. It works in a former mine, the old dispatch building holds an exhibition on local coal mining, and the Underground Tourist Route is toured with a guide and ends with a ride on a historic mining train. The Joseph Wittig Museum is the home of the writer and theologian with a recreated interior that shows how he worked. The house stands in the Olch Valley, and Wittig designed it himself and laid the foundation stone on 19 June 1926. The museum opened on 8 May 1997. The Museum of Minerals gathers rocks, minerals and fossils collected by Robert Borzęcki. It started in 2001 in Złoty Stok, from 2005 sat in former mine buildings on Obozowa Street, in 2012-2014 in Kłodzko, and today the exhibition is back in Nowa Ruda.

Where to find quiet in small religious monuments

The Loreto Chapel on Cmentarna Street was built in 1765-1767 at the initiative of Anton Klambt and is the only object of its kind in the Kłodzko county. From 1945 to 1994 it was not in use; in 1994 it was renovated and consecrated again. In Słupiec stands a small house-shaped chapel from 1826, rebuilt in the late 19th century, with a relief of the face of Jesus on its rear wall. Nearby is a neo-Gothic building from 1903-1904: before the war the ground floor held a school and the upper floor an Evangelical church, and today it is a residential house, so you see it from outside.

What if you want to sit down with a book?

The Municipal Public Library has worked since 1949 at Bohaterów Getta 10, in a former brewery building from around 1880, and runs three branches. In Słupiec, at Słupiecka 2, works another branch: no. 3 for adult readers and no. 4 for children. For a lone reader it is a calm stop on a rainy day. When the plan grows, look at the town's museums, places with character and the page Nowa Ruda attractions. Other towns of the region are on the list of solo places.