Sitting on Katowice’s doorstep is Sosnowiec, and conveniently enough your first sight of the town is also one of its premier attractions: the train station. In a region of ruined, soot-besotted industrial buildings and forgotten factories, and in stark contrast to Katowice’s concrete tramp motel, this neo-classical colonnaded railway station building stands out as a bit of a looker. Built to the designs of Wilhelm Grapow and modelled after Warsaw’s Vienna Station, the building has survived in style, unlike its capital counterpart which was sadly demolished during the Second World War. Established squarely on the Vienna to Warsaw iron thoroughfare, the station’s construction in 1859 signalled that Sosnowiec’s boom was on and the population quickly climbed to 60,000 by the beginning of the following century. If you’re having a poke around, you’ll also find a ‘railway’ church as well as a Russian Orthodox church nearby. Of similar style, and designed by H. Marconi – draftsman of the Vienna Station in Warsaw, is the railway station building in nearby Maczki and the ‘Elektrownia’ modern art gallery in the grounds of the former ‘Saturn’ coal mine.