The Teisseyre‐Tornquist Zone (TTZ) is generally regarded as a fossil plate boundary in Europe that extends 2000 km from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. We used an integrated approach merging potential fields and seismic data to explore crustal architecture across the TTZ in central Poland. The aim of the study was to test whether the TTZ coincides with an early Paleozoic (Caledonian) suture formed through the closure of the Tornquist Ocean along the SW Baltica margin. The suture is presumed to separate the East European Craton (EEC) from the Paleozoic terranes of Western Europe. Two seismic reflection lines from the PolandSPAN™ experiment were used to image the deep structure at the SW margin of the EEC. Lines PL‐5300 and PL‐5400 run NE‐SW in central and northern Poland, respectively. The seismic interpretation down to top of basement was integrated with 2‐D gravity and magnetic modeling to highlight the structure of the deep crust. Both the gravity and magnetic models show a suture that welds together two blocks at the base of crust. However, top of basement above the suture dips uniformly to the SW and is overlain by undisturbed lower Paleozoic and younger sediments. By implication, the suture must have developed in the Precambrian and both crustal blocks amalgamated belong to the EEC. Consequently, the Caledonian suture, formed by the closure of the Tornquist Ocean between Avalonia and Baltica, must be located farther southwest beneath thick upper Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments.

The still highly disputable terrane boundaries in the Sudetic segment of the Variscan belt mostly seem to follow major strike-slip faults and shear zones. Their kinematics, expected to place important constraints on the regional structural models, is discussed in some detail. The most conspicuous is the WNW–ESE Intra-Sudetic Fault Zone, separating several different structural units of the West Sudetes. It showed ductile dextral activity and, probably, displacement magnitude of the order of tens to hundreds kilometres, during late Devonian(?) to early Carboniferous times. In the late Carboniferous (to early Permian?), the sense of motion on the Intra-Sudetic Fault was reversed in a semi-brittle to brittle regime, with the left-lateral offset on the fault amounting to single kilometres. The north–south trending Niemcza and north-east–southwest Skrzynka shear zones are left-lateral, ductile features in the eastern part of the West Sudetes. Similarly oriented (northeast–southwest to NNE–SSW) regional size shear zones of as yet undetermined kinematics were discovered in boreholes under Cenozoic cover in the eastern part of the Sudetic foreland (the Niedźwiedź and Nysa-Brzeg shear zones). One of these is expected to represent the northern continuation of the major Stare Mesto Shear Zone in the Czech Republic, separating the geologically different units of the West and East Sudetes. The Rudawy Janowickie Metamorphic Unit, assumed in some reconstructions to comprise a mostly strike-slip terrane boundary, is characterized by ductile fabric developed in a thrusting regime, modified by a superimposed normal-slip extensional deformation. Thrusting-related deformational fabric was locally reoriented prior to the extensional event and shows present-day strike-slip kinematics in one of the sub-units. The Sudetic Boundary Fault, although prominent in the recent structure and topography of the region, was not active as a Variscan strike-slip fault zone. The reported data emphasize the importance of syn-orogenic strike-slip tectonics in the Sudetes. The recognized shear sense is compatible with a strike-slip model of the northeast margin of the Bohemian Massif, in which the Kaczawa and Góry Sowie Units underwent late Devonian–early Carboniferous southeastward long-distance displacement along the Intra-Sudetic Fault Zone from their hypothetical original position within the Northern Phyllite Zone and the Mid-German Crystalline High of the German Variscides, respectively, and were juxtaposed with units of different provenance southwest of the fault. The Intra-Sudetic Fault Zone, together with the Elbe Fault Zone further south, were subsequently cut in the east and their eastern segments were displaced and removed by the younger, early to late Carboniferous, NNE–SSW trending, transpressional Moldanubian–Stare Mesto Shear Zone.