Other sights in Poland
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Praga
Crossing the Vistula from the Old Town into Praga, Warsaw's eastern suburb, is like entering another city. Clean, level streets and renovated buildings are replaced by broken roads and crumbling façades, and much of the populace is working class and poor. Despite the grit, Praga is the place to be. The area is slowly being gentrified as artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs move in, attracted by its pre-WWII buildings (as it was not directly involved in the battles of 1944, Praga didn't suffer much damage) and cheap rent. Ventures open and close on a regular basis but the list of established places grows steadily longer.
InfoPraga (www.infopraga.com.pl; ul Ząbkowska 36 )…
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Museum of the Grunwald Battlefield
The battlefield is an open, gently rolling meadow adorned with three monuments. Built on the central hill is the Museum of the Grunwald Battlefield, which has a miniscule display of period armour, maps and battle banners. Its redeeming feature is a small cinema that plays scenes from Bitwa pod Grunwaldem (1931), a classic Polish flick about the battle. Five hundred metres from the museum are the ruins of a chapel, erected by the order a year after the battle, on the spot where the grand master is supposed to have died. All signs are in Polish, but the shop by the entrance to the battlefield sells brochures in English and German.
reviewed
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Skansen
The small village of Wdzydze Kiszewskie, 16km south of Kościerzyna, boasts an interesting skansen featuring typical Kashubian architecture. Established in 1906 by the local schoolmaster, this was Poland’s first open-air museum of traditional architecture. Pleasantly positioned on the lakeside, it now contains a score of buildings collected from central and southern Kashubia, including cottages, barns, a school, a windmill and an 18th-century church used for Sunday Mass. Some of the interiors are fitted with authentic furnishings, implements and decorations, showing how the Kashubians lived a century or two ago.
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A
Kantor's Atelier
Even in life it was hard to define Tadeusz Kantor, a master of both performance and visual arts, who blurred the line between genres. Poet, painter, set designer and actor, he delighted and confounded his audiences with his one-man avant-garde extravaganzas. The venue for his performances was the Cricot 2 Theatre - defunct since his death in 1990. But the Crikoteka archive documents his life work, maintaining a collection of set designs, costumes, photographs and videos. Kantor's Atelier is also open to the public, housing a small gallery of pieces that the artist created towards the end of his life.
reviewed
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B
Mariacka Basilica
The twin steeples of the Mariacka Basilica tower over the Rynek Główny, acting as a geographic and historic landmark. From here the bugler plays the hejnał every hour, marking the time and remembering the legend of the trumpeter of Kraków. Enter the side door into the church, which is a veritable museum of artistic masterpieces: wall paintings by Jan Matejko; windows by Stanisław Wyspiański and Józef Mehoffer; and the gilded pentaptych altarpiece by Wit Stwosz. You can also climb to the tall tower to get up close and personal with the bugler.
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Biecz Regional Museum
Most of the collection of the excellent Biecz Regional Museum is housed in two 16th-century buildings, both close to the church. The so-called House with a Turret holds the complete contents of an ancient pharmacy including its laboratory, as well as musical instruments, traditional household utensils, equipment from old craft workshops and a cellar for storing Hungarian wine. The Kromer Townhouse has more historical exhibits on the town’s past, plus archaeological and numismatic collections.
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Nikiszowiec
Those with time on their hands should head for the suburb of Nikiszowiec where there is a unique housing estate built for miners (and their families) who worked at the nearby Nickisch (now Poniatowski) shaft between 1908 and 1924.
Built of attractive red brick, with a network of streets between them, the nine blocks are interconnected by gateways, and the complex was totally self-sufficient, with everything from shops, restaurants and a swimming pool to a hospital, a school and a detention centre. Bus 12 goes here from the centre.
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C
Schindler's Factory
The massive enamelware factory (made famous by Steven Spielberg) was where Oskar Schindler employed thousands of Jewish prisoners - and eventually saved many of their lives. The factory is as an interactive, multimedia museum of WWII history. The museum features exhibits on the Nazi invasion of Poland, daily life in the ghetto and the Płaszów Camp, as well as a re-creation of Schindler's office. The thought-provoking 'room of choices' encourages visitors to consider the difficult judgments that every person had to make during the war.
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D
Plac Bohaterów Getta
The centre of the Jewish ghetto was Plac Zgody, now named after the 'heroes of the ghetto'. This was the point of departure for thousands of Jews who boarded the waiting trains to the various camps. Today it is marked with a memorial by Kraków architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Latak consisting of 70 eerily empty chairs, which represent furniture and other remnants discarded by the deportees. Just south of the square on ul Lwowska is a remaining piece of the ghetto wall with a plaque marking the site.
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Mauerwald
The Wolf’s Lair may be the most famous example of Germany’s wartime presence in Masuria, but it’s not the only one. A second bunker complex, known as Mauerwald, was built 18km northeast of Hitler’s secret headquarters. The 30 bunkers and accompanying buildings, which were occupied from 1941 to 1944, were home to a handful of the Nazis’ top military commanders, including Field Marshall Paulus, General Guderian and Colonel von Stauffenberg.
reviewed
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St Florian’s Church
This 12th-century church’s location was apparently chosen by the oxen that carried the holy relics of St Florian from Rome. When the beasts of burden would go no further, it was taken as a sign of a holy site. In 1582, the church survived a fire that swept through the city; since then, St Florian has been considered a patron saint of Kraków and of firefighters. The nearby monument celebrates the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, when the Poles defeated the Teutonic Knights.
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Foundation for European Understanding
The Foundation for European Understanding is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to keeping alive the spiritual heritage of the Kreisau Circle and the humanistic teachings of Count von Moltke and his fellow resistance fighters. The centre has a small but interesting exhibition in the central Krzyżowa Palace, and surrounding it are fields, a river, a lake and ancient groves offering many opportunities for walking and hiking.
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Steelworks Complex
You can’t actually go inside the massive steelworks complex at the east end of the suburb, but it’s worth riding the tram to the entrance, which is marked with a huge sign for Huta im Tadeusza Sendzimira. (Originally named after Lenin, the factory adopted the name of this Polish-American inventor in 1989.) The castlelike administrative buildings reflect the Renaissance style that was declared to be Poland’s ‘national form’.
reviewed
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E
Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace
Quaint, cobblestoned Kanonicza is the perfect street to put a palace and fill it with age-old paintings and sculpture. This newish branch of the National Museum contains two exhibits of religious artwork. The Art of Old Poland (12th to18th centuries) includes loads of Gothic paintings, altar pieces and an entire room devoted to Veit Stoss. The second exhibit focuses on Orthodox art, which means iconography, from the eastern regions.
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Castle of Chęciny
From a distance, the Castle of Chęciny looks like a foreboding tri-chimneyed factory. Closer inspection reveals its impressive hilltop location presiding over the quaint town of Chęciny. The view from one of the towers reveals why the site was chosen as an all-seeing defensive position. Visitors can climb the tower to experience a great view of the surrounding region and pleasant town of Chęciny.
reviewed
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Arka Pana
The beloved Arka Pana was the first church in Nowa Huta, built in 1977 after much controversy. Authorities had intended the suburb to be a church-free zone, and it required protests and politicking by the local bishop (one Karol Wojtyła, who would later become pope) to get the job done. Across the street, a small monument marks the spot where a steelworker was killed while protesting communist rule.
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Defensive Walls
Dating to around 1300, the Florian Gate (Brama Floriańska) is the only gate surviving from the city's defensive walls. To the north, the Barbican (Barbakan) is a powerful, circular brick bastion adorned with seven turrets. This curious piece of defensive art was built around 1498 for additional protection; it was once connected to the gate by a narrow passage running over a moat.
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Hunting Palace
Prince Antoni Radziwiłł gave his name to Antonin, having put it on the map by building his Hunting Palace here from 1822 to 1824. This handsome wooden structure is still the town’s showpiece; it was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, one of the outstanding German architects of the period, who was also responsible for numerous monumental buildings in Berlin and Prussia.
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F
State Rooms
The castle's official State Rooms, or Royal Chambers, have been restored to their original Renaissance and Baroque styles. The two-dozen 2nd-floor rooms are crammed with period paintings, tapestries and works of art. The highlight is the Hall of Deputies: its fantastic coffered ceiling is studded with 30 individually carved and painted wooden heads staring back at you.
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G
Church of St Benedict
Tucked into a wooded hillside above Podgórze, this mysterious little church is one of the oldest in Kraków. Historians are not certain of its origin, though archaeologists estimate that it was built in the 12th century. Although the interior has been restored, the church is open only once a year on the first Tuesday after Easter, when the spring festival of Rękawka is celebrated.
reviewed
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H
Krakus Mound
Nobody knows the exact origins of the 16m mound that towers over Podgórze. According to legend, it was the burial site of the city's founder, Prince Krak. Excavations in the 1930s could not confirm this story, but they did discover artefacts dating to the 7th century. The mysterious mound offers 360º of panoramic views, including the Old Town, Kazimierz, Nowa Huta and Płaszów.
reviewed
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Skansen
Set on the southwestern shore of Lake Łebsko, the tiny isolated hamlet of Kluki was the last holdout of Slovincian culture, now showcased in the centrally located skansen. It’s modest but authentic, comprising original in situ buildings. The long, two-family, whitewashed houses are fitted with traditional furniture and decorations.
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Borderland Foundation
synagogue, built by the sizable local Jewish community in the 1880s. During the German occupation it served as a fire station and after the war as a storage room. Today it’s an art gallery operated by the Borderland Foundation, focusing on the arts and culture of different ethnic and religious traditions from the region.
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Teatr Ludowy
It’s worth a visit to the Teatr Ludowy just to admire the proletarian architecture. Built in 1955, the theatre was known for its experimental, avant-garde productions. Equally innovative, the Łaźnia Nowa has converted an old workshop into an experimental art space, with two stages and plenty of creative juice.
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Open-Air Museum of the Kielce Village
In the village of Tokarnia, 20km from Kielce, is the 80-hectare Open-Air Museum of the Kielce Village. The skansen (open-air museum of traditional architecture) includes many structures complete with interiors. Particularly interesting is the exhibition dedicated to local woodcarver Jan Bernasiewicz (1908–84).
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