Silesia has two countenances - the black and the green ones. The Upper Silesian Industrial District, the biggest one in Poland and most thickly inhabited, gathers fourteen vast cities led by Katowice, inhabited by approximately three million people. Black Silesia grew on hard coal followed by steel and heavy industry. It created its own mining traditions, morals and even cuisine specialities. One can come across them for instance in the skansen museum of folklore architecture within the area of the Culture and Rest Park, situated between Katowice and Chorzów or in the Black Trout Tunnel and on underground antique routes belonging to the mine of the city of Tarnowskie Góry.

Green Silesia occupies mainly the Beskidy Mountains at its southern end - the Beskid of Silesia and of Żywiec. They are entered through the "Gate" in the form of Bielsko-Biała, a big centre of industry, culture and business tourism. The Beskid of Silesia with its centres in Szczyrk, Wisła and Ustronie constitutes the best managed mountain range in Poland, an attractive tourist centre not only in the winter and not only for skiers. Moreover, its villages, such as Brenna, Istebna or Koniaków enchant with colourful and still living folklore. The area competes against the Beskid of Żywiec, with an artificial lake situated in a dale on the Soła River, with centres in Korbielów, Zwardoń and in Żywiec - an old city with the Habsburg Dynasty castle as well as a brewery producing delicious beer for a century and a half.

In the northern part of the Silesian Province there is Częstochowa - an industrialised city inhabited by two hundred and fifty thousand people, with the Paulite monastic complex on Jasna Góra considered to be the "religious capital city of catholic Poland". Exhibited in the monastic basilica, the Holy Virgin painting of Częstochowa, popularly called the "Black Madonna" as well, constitutes the centre of the Virgin Mary cult and - since the 15th century - the place of destination for pilgrimages numbering presently millions of people.