A dune hill with a Lusatian culture stronghold in the Osobowice Forest in Wrocław.
Szaniec Szwedzki is a dune hill 126 metres above sea level in the Osobowice Forest in Wrocław, partly built up artificially by human hands.
Part of the hill is a former stronghold in the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners. According to archaeologists' findings, the stronghold was inhabited, with breaks, from the Bronze Age to the early Iron Age, that is from 900 to 450 BC, within the Lusatian culture. Remains of a cemetery associated with this settlement have also been discovered here.
The hill's name comes from a legend about Swedish troops said to have been stationed here during the Thirty Years' War, fought in the 17th century.
From the early 19th century, Szaniec Szwedzki, together with the whole of the Osobowice Forest, was a place for excursions and recreation for the people of Wrocław. In 1902 an observation tower named after Emperor Wilhelm I was erected here, designed by Karl Klimm. On its first floor, from 1927 to 1944, a branch of the Silesian Museum of Applied Arts and Antiquities operated, presenting archaeological finds from the nearby Lusatian culture settlement and cemetery. The facility, open only in summer, was founded by the museum's then deputy director Hans Seger, hence its other name - the Summer Archaeological Museum.
Military operations at the end of the Second World War damaged the observation tower, and its remains were finally demolished in the 1960s. Today there is no longer any building from that period on the hill.
A few kilometres from Szaniec Szwedzki lies Park Zachodni in Wrocław, and closer to the city centre the Museum of Games and Computers of a Bygone Era and the White Stork Synagogue.
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