★ History and art · The Great Masurian LakesWojnowoA wooden village on the shores of a lake where Old Believers, Russian Orthodox who fled persecution, still live, with their monastery and their church without bells.
The storyIn the 17th century some Russian Orthodox believers rejected the reforms of the liturgy and were persecuted; in the 19th century some groups, the Philippians, obtained permission from the King of Prussia to settle in the Masurian forests. In Wojnowo they built a monastery, inhabited until the early 2000s and now a museum, and a molenna, the prayer house with icons, still used by the small community. The cemetery has eight-armed Orthodox crosses.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · The Great Masurian LakesSztynortA marina among the lakes next to the palace of the Counts Lehndorff, under restoration after decades of neglect, with an avenue of ancient oaks.
The storyFor four centuries Sztynort was the residence of the Lehndorffs, one of the great families of the Prussian nobility. The last owner, Count Heinrich von Lehndorff, took part in the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler, whose headquarters was a few kilometres away: after the assassination attempt failed he was arrested and executed in Berlin. After the war the palace became a state farm and fell into ruin; today it belongs to a Polish-German foundation that is saving it.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · Warmia and OlsztynReszelA small Warmian town with cobbled streets, a Gothic bridge and a bishops' castle, where one of the last burnings at the stake in Europe took place in the early 19th century.
The storyThe brick castle was built in the 14th century by the bishops of Warmia and later turned into a prison. In 1811 Barbara Zdunk, a woman accused of starting a fire in the town and considered a witch by the townspeople, was sentenced to death and burned at the stake outside the walls: she is often remembered as the last woman burned at the stake in Europe. Today the castle houses an art gallery and a hotel, and the town is one of the most intact in the region.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Elbląg, Grunwald and western MasuriaBuczyniecA 19th-century canal where boats, instead of climbing the slope through locks, are loaded onto carriages and hauled on rails across the meadows.
The storyTo link the lakes of western Masuria to the Baltic, the Prussian engineer Georg Jakob Steenke had to overcome a drop of almost a hundred metres in a few kilometres. Instead of building dozens of locks, between 1844 and 1881 he built five inclined planes: the boats enter a submerged carriage, which a large wheel driven by the flow of the water pulls up and down the rails, over the grass. The system still works as it did then and is a national historic monument.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · The north-east and the Romincka ForestStańczykiTwo twin railway bridges, more than thirty metres high, with concrete arches like a Roman aqueduct, in the middle of the forest and with no tracks left.
The storyThe viaducts were built by the Prussians in the early 20th century for a local railway crossing the Błędzianka valley, in East Prussia. The line was short-lived: in 1945 the Red Army dismantled the tracks and took them to the Soviet Union, and the railway never reopened. The bridges were left standing in the woods, near the new border with the Russian Kaliningrad region, and you can walk across them.
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