Park Juliusza Słowackiego, Wrocław

Park Juliusza Słowackiego is a five-and-three-quarter-hectare green space on the edge of Wrocław’s Old Town, close to the area known as the New Town. Its most unexpected layer lies under the lawns and paths: part of the park occupies a filled-in stretch of the former city moat. For a time, that waterway was also the final reach of the Oława before it met the Oder.

As you follow the greenery, notice how this is not a detached garden but a thread through a dense cultural quarter. The Old Town Promenade passes through the park, while the same city block includes the Architecture Museum and the Racławice Panorama. The park is protected as a municipal historic monument.

Its planting gives the place a quieter kind of variety: maples, horse chestnuts, lindens, oaks, hornbeams, beeches, ashes and willows all grow here, alongside shrubs including forsythia, rhododendron, yew and juniper. More than thirty bird species have been recorded in the park, and the tawny owl and stone marten are among its animal residents. In a city shaped by rivers and former defences, this park turns an old boundary into a place for trees, birds and wandering.