Częstochowa - / 251 000 town / is one of the main pilgrimage centers of the world, with a huge cultural and national heritage. It boasts a number of valuable monuments, at the same time being a contemporary city with wide infrastructure and a range of social and economic facilities. Altogether there are nine universities and colleges with 40 thousand students here. Its cultural life derives from an ample calendar of traditional and cultural events: International Festival of Sacred Music "Gaude Mater ", Triennale of Sacred Art " Sacrum ", Bronisław Huberman Festival, International Festival " May Note ", Hot Jazz Spring Festival - these are merely the most significant events. Częstochowa was the first city in Poland to be awarded the Grand Prix de Europe. The most beautiful part of the region is the Cracow - Częstochowa Uplands. Tourists are impressed by the wonderful vast landscape with its white limestone towers, rocky hills, caves, ravines and springs as well as abundant and varied fauna and flora with numerous rare species. Ruins of medieval castels, scattered throughout the Uplands, visible from far away with the remains of their white, limestone walls, stir the imagination with fascinatinglegents, and both frighten and atract visitors with their mysterious appearance, adding to the beauty of the Uplands landscape. To preserve the unique features of the Uplands' nature and landscape, many nature reserves and the complex of Jurassic Landscape Parks were established.