★ History and art · Lublin and aroundKozłówkaA Baroque palace of the Zamoyski counts with intact interiors, and next to it the largest collection of socialist realist art in Poland.
The storyThe palace was built in the 18th century and embellished at the end of the 19th by Konstanty Zamoyski, who filled it with paintings, furniture and stucco in a deliberately lavish style: it is one of the few Polish aristocratic interiors to have survived almost intact. After the war the palace became a museum, and in the 1990s, when the statues of Lenin and Stalin were removed from the squares, many ended up here, in the old coach house, which became the gallery of socialist realist art.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Nature · Zamość and RoztoczeSusiecSmall rapids and cascades on a river flowing through a fir wood, one of the most unusual landscapes of lowland Poland.
The storyIn southern Roztocze the Tanew, Jeleń and Sopot rivers cut into the rock and form dozens of small waterfalls, usually less than a metre high, which in Polish are called “szumy”, the rustlings. The nature reserve protects the most beautiful stretch of the Tanew, with a path along the bank among the firs and little footbridges. In an almost completely flat region, the sound of the water comes as a surprise.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · The eastern borderChełmA town built over kilometres of tunnels dug into the chalk, which you visit fifteen metres underground.
The storyFor centuries the people of Chełm mined white chalk, the kind used for writing, by digging under their own houses, until the ground beneath the centre became a maze of tunnels on several levels. After the war some of the tunnels were reinforced and opened to the public: the guided tour even introduces you to Bieluch, the white ghost of legend. Up above, on the hill, stands the basilica with its Marian shrine.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · The eastern borderWłodawaThe best-preserved synagogue complex in eastern Poland, in a small town on the Bug where Jews, Catholics and Orthodox Christians lived side by side.
The storyWłodawa's Great Synagogue was built in the 18th century in Baroque style, with a painted and carved Torah ark, next to the small synagogue and the house of study. Until the war most of the town's inhabitants were Jewish; today the three buildings house the Museum of the Land of Three Cultures, which holds a festival of the same name in late summer, with the Orthodox and Catholic churches a few steps away.
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