a photo gallery currently showing: STONE IN OUR WORLD an exhibit of photographs of the stonework of Lower Silesia

In the heart of Europe, tucked in the southwest corner of Poland, is the historical region of Lower Silesia. It shares a 270-mile border with the Czech Republic and a 50-mile border with Germany. This region, the heart of Europe, is vastly diverse in terms of natural resources, in particular stone. Granite, basalt, syenite, serpentine, quartz, marble and alabaster, along with a wide variety of sandstones, are the mainstay of the region's stone industry. Other significant deposits of gold, silver, uranium and lignite have all been quarried here throughout the centuries. The discovery of copper in the region as recently as the 1950s placed Poland center stage among other major world producers of this raw material.      All This natural wealth has meant that throughout the ages Lower Silesia has been a coveted prize for rulers near and far. Over the last thousand years the region has changed hands (and national identities) several times; it has been ruled from Cracow, Prague, Vienna, Berlin, and, presently, Warsaw.      Large sculpted granite figures found on the slopes of Sleza, a solitary, somewhat mysterious mountain rising from a stretch of fertile plain in the middle of the province, date back to at least 4,500 BC and best attest to the long, special relationship local inhabitants have had with stone. In the Middle Ages, as a common form of punishment, convicted murderers carved large crosses from granite at the site of their crimes; they also were required to sculpt their murder weapons on the crosses. In the 18th century, the Prussian monarch Frederick II set his eyes on Lower Silesia. He was particularly interested in gaining control over the natural resources, especially the extremely rare greenish semi-precious stone, chrysoprase, which he later used to decorate the halls of his favorite palace at Sans Souci in Potsdam, near Berlin. (The world's first commercial mining of chrysoprase occurred in Lower Silesia following its discovery in 1740 near the town of Frankenstein.      Throughout this region, stone has been a favorite building material used to construct everything from simple farmhouses to ornate cathedrals. As one travels through Lower Silesia, it is easy to discern what stone is available where by studying the buildings, churches and cemeteries found in any given area. The diversity in styles and quality of the stonework makes the region an open-air handbook on the art of stonemasonry.		By Juliet Golden and Tadeusz Wlodarczak      Stone also recounts the region's brutal history. During a long siege in the final months of World War II, Lower Silesia's capital—known then as Breslau and today as Wroclaw—was largely destroyed; even today, many of the remaining buildings bear stark battle scars. As a part of the re-shuffling of borders that happened after the war, two hundred years of Prussian and German domination of the area came to an end. As a result, in one of the largest population transfers in history, approximately three million Germans were resettled from Lower Silesia to make way for Poles leaving their homes in towns and villages, located further east in today's Ukraine.      But even though the Germans were gone, their material culture remained. In the aftermath of post-war settlements, Poles set out to make this land theirs. German inscriptions were scratched from buildings, museums and market halls were blown up, and cemeteries were razed to the ground. Of the more than 70 pre-war cemeteries in the city of Wroclaw, only two remain today. The gravestones were used for anything from paving streets to building animal runs at the local zoo—some were simply buried in mounds at the edges of the city. In the countryside, many of the more than 160 castles and palaces of the region were converted into multi-family dwellings to house workers of collective farms. Other historic monuments were left to the elements; many have decayed beyond repair.