Eagle's Nests Trail with Pieskowa Skala and Ojcow castle - PRIVATE tour from Krakow (4h)

Trail of the Eagles’ Nests. The picturesque Trail of the Eagles’ Nests is marked in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. You can complete this route – over 160 km in total – in under a week. In that time, you get to hike amidst the natural beauty of Ojców National Park and receive a sizable dose of Polish history captured in centuries-old strongholds, most of them built during the reign of Casimir the Great, in the 14th century. Must-see sites include Pieskowa Skała Castle and Ogrodzieniec Castle in Podzamcze. The latter was a location for the Netflix series The Witcher.

Ojcowski National Park. Numerous caves, scenic ravines, rocky passes and spectacular rock formations, the famous “Hercules’ Club”, have been created here by nature. Almost 400 caves are scattered around the park with the Łokietka, Ciemna and Zbójecka caves amongst the biggest.Forests, mainly mixed, cover the major part of the park. As for the park’s flora, the most characteristic species are those of high mountain grasses and steno thermal lichen. The insect population is extremely diversified (over 3,300 species) including 1,142 species of beetles and 520 species of butterflies. The caves are a perfect shelter for a multitude of bat species.

Hercules’ Club. A peculiarly shaped limestone pillar in the Ojców National Park is mentioned under the name ‘Falcon Rock’ in a fairy tale about Sir Twardowski penned by the 19th century writer and folklorist Kazimierz Władysław Wóycicki. The nobleman Twardowski sells his soul to the devil on condition that his soul is collected in Rome. The devil agrees and provides him with great riches and, to celebrate their agreement, turns a great rock upside down. This is the ‘Falcon Rock’ or, as it is more commonly referred to these days,  Hercules’ Club, a 25-meter-high rock which indeed looks as if it was standing upside down as it widens towards the top. Eventually Sir Twardowski is tricked by the devil into visiting an inn called Rome, where he has to fulfill his end of the deal.

Pieskowa Skala Castle. The fortified building was erected by order of King Casimir the Great already in the 14th century. It gained its Renaissance character more than 200 years later thanks to its owners, the Szafraniec family. They followed the verified example of Wawel. Architects brought from Italy raised the arcaded courtyard, while the clock tower was given a helmet similar to that from the towers of the Royal Castle. Next to the castle, the masters from Italy erected an architectonic gem: the arcaded loggia. Later they designed an Italian garden located on the terrace above the precipice. Today, the castle houses a museum presenting style changes in European art and Poland’s biggest gallery of English painting.

Ojcow Castle. Ojców Castle is located in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, part of a system of castles known as the Eagle's Nests. Formerly protecting the southern border of the Kingdom of Poland it is currently housing a museum dedicated to the castle in its renovated castle-tower. The castle is located in the village of Ojców, 25 kilometres north of Kraków.