Zawodzie Archeological Reserve – in the period between 9th/10th - 13th centuries there used to be an early-medieval grad, the cradle of Kalisz.

The centre’s development is connected with the reign of Mieszko III the Old (c. 1122-1202), Duke of Kalisz and Wielkopolska. The stone St. Paul Collegiate Church was raised on its foundations and was meant to serve as a necropolis for the rulers of Kalisz. The Duke of Silesia, Henryk Brodaty (Henry I the Bearded), destroyed the grad in 1233 and the city began to expand elsewhere. The plundered ducal grad fell into ruins and the collegiate church was stripped for building materials. The place was later named the “Swedish Mountains”. The early medieval hill fort, which was opened on the Zawodzie Archaeological Reserve in 2008, comprises a full-scale reconstruction of the basement of the St. Paul Collegiate Church, a two-storey defensive tower, a wooden bridge, and fragments of palisades, a stockade and a defensive embankment. There are also seven wooden houses with a variety of structures, a stone kurgan (burial mound) reminiscent of a cemetery and crematorium, and two granite models of the entire reconstruction of the reserve and collegiate church. A late 18th-century wooden cottage, now used for ethnographic exhibitions, was brought to the hill fort from the old town.

In 2007 the reconstruction of the grad began. The grount part of collegiate Church of St. Paul was reconstructed as well as cottages representing the types of medieval wooden buildings, a bridge, the entrance gate, a replica of the defense tower defense of the thirteenth century, the stockade and the mound.

Next to the reserve you can see the only wooden church in the city - St. Wojciech' Church built in 1798.