Katowice

Katowice ( , , ; szl, Katowicy; german: Kattowitz, yi, קאַטעוויץ, Kattevitz) is the capital city of the

Silesian Voivodeship Silesian Voivodeship, or Silesia Province ( pl, województwo śląskie ) is a voivodeship, or province, in southern Poland, centered on the historic region known as Upper Silesia ('), with Katowice serving as its capital. Despite the Silesian ...

in southern

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

and the central city of the

Upper Silesian metropolitan area The Upper Silesian metropolitan area is a metropolitan area in southern Poland and northeastern Czech Republic, centered on the cities of Katowice and Ostrava in Silesia and has around 5 million inhabitants. Located in the three administrativ ...

. It is the 11th most populous city in Poland, while its urban area is the most populous in the country and one of the most populous in the European Union. Katowice has a population of 286,960 according to a 31 December 2021 estimate. Katowice is a central part of the Metropolis GZM, with a population of 2.3 million, and a part of a larger

that extends into the Czech Republic and has a population of 5-5.3 million people."''Study on Urban Functions (Project 1.4.3)''"
– European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion, 2007 Throughout the mid-18th century, Katowice developed into a village following the discovery of rich

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as stratum, rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen ...

reserves in the area. In the first half of the 19th century, intensive