A City of Many Layers: A Guide to Lublin
A beautiful Old Town, a distinctive castle, a modern cultural centre built on 40-year-old ruins, an avant-garde housing estate, but also ubiquitous large-format advertising or a ferociously orange hospital towering over the city. There are many architectural and spatial surprises awaiting visitors in Lublin.
This largest Polish city to the east of the Vistula River is now home to around 340,000 people, 20 percent of whom are students at the city's numerous universities. According to a report by the Polish Economic Institute, Lublin is the fifth most academic city in Poland after Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, and Poznań. At the same time, it is one of the ten Polish cities that holds the prestigious and historically valuable title of of being a Monument of History. But young people setting the tone for this historic city is not the only paradox shaping contemporary Lublin, a city with many layers.
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Ku Farze Street, Lublin, photo: Wojciech Pacewicz/PAP
Tourists come to Lublin to see its historical buildings. There is no denying that Lublin's Old Town is one of the most picturesque in Poland, a feature which it owes to the accumulation and layering of buildings over the centuries. The first important buildings in Lublin's Old Town were erected as early as the 13th century; a building boom occurred in 1317, when Lublin was granted city rights. As in the case of many towns at that time, the great fire was 'of service' to the architectural transformation – in the 1670s, the medieval buildings destroyed in the conflagration were replaced by Renaissance ones. The merchant city developed over the following years; in the 17th century the ramparts were pulled down to widen the urban area (the Kraków and Grodzka Gates as well as the Gothic Tower have survived); before the outbreak of World War II, restoration works were being carried out in the area. 70 per cent of Lublin's Old Town consists of original historical buildings, which is an exception among Polish centres destroyed during the Second World War. It is precisely as a result of the long and natural process of the development of the urban centre that the most picturesque corners of this part of the city, such as Ku Farze Street or Hartwigs’ Alley, could emerge.
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Po Farze square in Lublin, photo: Wojciech Kozioł/Forum
A remarkable site in Lublin's oldest district is the Po Farze Square, created in the 1840s after the parish church of St Michael the Archangel – which had stood there since the 13th century – was demolished. The first important building in the city, the Gothic church, was demolished because it had lost its significance to the cathedral, it began falling into disrepair, and during the partitions there were no financial possibilities for renovation. The foundations of the medieval church were unearthed and examined by archaeologists in the 1930s, and in 2002 they were exposed and illuminated, restoring this relic of the past to the city and turning it into a wondrous public space.
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Panas Alley in Lublin, photo: Rafał Michałowski/AG
The Old Town in Lublin also has its wounds, events whose memory is resurfacing recently. The most tragic of these occurred during World War II, when the Jewish quarter in Podzamcze disappeared from the city. Although in 1939 Jews constituted one third of the town's population, in just a few years the Germans murdered most of them (most of them died in the extermination camp in Belzec), razing the buildings of Podzamcze to the ground. After World War II, a decision was made to erect new houses in its place. At the foot of Lublin's castle, a semicircular square was created (which still serves as a car park), surrounded by buildings in the old town style. Small traces of the Jewish quarter can be found today on Lubartowska, Kowalska, Furmańska and Cyrulicza Streets.
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The Royal Castle in Lublin (now the Lublin Museum), photo: Marek Bazak/East News
A castle overlooks the old town. Although the presence of such a structure in a city with a history dating back many centuries is nothing out of the ordinary, the Lublin edifice does not resemble traditional castles. Its crenellated, extremely impressive façade with a wide gate topped with two metal axes is the result of the reconstruction of the ruined building, which was carried out in the 1820s. Although there was a large defensive structure on the castle hill as early as in the 13th century (it was later extended first in the Gothic style, then in the Renaissance style), it played a significant role for a long time. However, it did not regain its splendour after being destroyed during the Swedish Deluge and started to fall into ruins. It was even scheduled for demolition, but in 1823-1826 a decision was made to rebuild it as a needed prison. The neo-Gothic building did not go down in history well: soon after its construction, it became a place of detention for participants of the January Uprising, later for revolutionaries; in the interwar period, communist activists were brought here, and during the war – members of the resistance.
In 1944-54, the Department of Security (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa – UB) ran an exceptionally harsh prison for political opponents in it, where many death sentences were carried out. It was not until 1957 that the castle gained a new function: it became the seat of the National Museum, which, apart from its sculpture and painting collection (you can see Jan Matejko's painting Union of Lublin here), the museum has a valuable collection of coins, medals and militaria. During the 19th-century reconstruction of the castle, a Gothic tower and the castle’s former chapel were incorporated into its new wing. Already at the end of the 19th century, historic Byzantine-Ruthenian paintings from the 15th century were discovered under the backdrop of the chapel; the painstaking process of their research and restoration lasted from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s. Today, they constitute one of the most valuable monuments of medieval art in Poland.
A landscape, not a building
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Monument to Struggle and Martyrdom at Majdanek (Lublin), photo: Sławomir Olzacki/Forum
Even though not all the pages of Lublin's history have been uncovered and honoured, the city's painful wartime past was monumentally commemorated in the 1960s. In 1969, on the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek the Monument to Struggle and Martyrdom was erected – an astounding, extensive landscape complex which included the former camp buildings as well as a spatial and sculptural composition designed by architect and sculptor Wiktor Tołkin and constructor Janusz Dembek. It opens with an abstract monument-gate, and behind it stretches the so-called Road of Homage and Remembrance, leading to the Mausoleum, a huge concrete dome containing the ashes from the crematorium that once existed in this place. This monumental reliquary is decorated with a telling inscription: 'Our fate is a warning to you'.
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Maria Skłodowska-Curie University campus, known as the University District, photo: Jakub Orzechowski/AG
Lublin's noteworthy but also tragic history is an important – but not the only – aspect of the city. The contemporary aspect is the city’s academic life. The first university in Lublin was founded in the 17th century by the Dominicans, but the oldest continuously operating institution of higher education in the city is the Catholic University of Lublin, founded in 1918. In 1944, the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University was established, which in the following decades gave rise to the Medical University as well as the University of Life Sciences; since 1953, the Lublin University of Technology has also been active in the city.
In terms of architecture, the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University stands out, for which a large campus was designed as early as 1948. The development of the campus has continued through time and as a result many stylistic 'layers' can be found among its buildings – from massive socialist realism architecture, through prefabricated modernist parts, to quite contemporary glass edifices. What makes this place even more special is the network of footbridges stretching between the most significant buildings on campus. However, these 'sky walkways' are dilapidated and do not serve the needs of pedestrians. And who knows, perhaps now they could actually be of greatest use, as the university grounds are overwhelmed by cars parked everywhere (including on pavements and lawns).
The continuity of space & history
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The Słowacki Housing Estate in Lublin, designed by Oskar and Zofia Hansen, photo: Jakub Orzechowski/AG
The post-war period and the desire to look for answers to the problems troubling the society of that time have left yet another mark on Lublin. It is, of course, the Juliusz Słowacki Housing Estate, designed in the 1960s by Zofia and Oskar Hansen. One of the seven housing estates built by the Lublin Housing Cooperative (most of them named after writers and poets) is an implementation reflecting the utopian vision the Hansens had, who were looking for the best form for a housing complex. The Lublin housing estate was based on Oskar Hansen's idea of a Linear Continuous System, a long line of buildings, each strip of which was to be designated for a different function. It can be seen on the estate in the form of long, bending blocks, which mark out the area filled with smaller houses, but above all with numerous common spaces, playgrounds, green areas (Hansen even envisaged an open-air theatre here). This space, conceived as a humanistic, open, safe area, is complemented by a complex of one- and two-storey commercial and service pavilions, which the architects gave expressive forms covered with irregular, folded roofs.
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Centre for the Meeting of Cultures in Lublin, designed by Bolesław Stelmach, photo: Łukasz Borkowski
In search of the many layers that make up Lublin, it is also worth visiting the Centre for the Meeting of Cultures (CSK), because here they are clearly visible. The building, designed by Bolesław Stelmach, was erected on the site of a theatre which was never finished, but which was started in the 1970s. For four decades, the centre of the city was haunted by the skeleton of an investment that never came to fruition; it was only in 2012 that a new building began to grow in its place. In the concrete and glass building, Bolesław Stelmach has preserved and exposed a fragment of that unrealised structure, thus maintaining an impression of continuity in the development of this place. In addition to the auditoriums, workshop and seminar rooms, the modern CSK building also offers the public a green roof garden with a viewing terrace, an apiary as well as a public square.
Getting through the layers
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Saint Jan of Dukla Oncology Centre of the Lublin Region, photo: COZ press materials/ https://cozl.eu
Lublin's image is shaped by more than just its numerous monuments and equally as interesting contemporary developments. The city is struggling with problems similar to those that plague other Polish cities. One of them is certainly the advertising chaos – even the most charming corners of the city are marred by large-format advertisements, and wandering around the city is effectively hindered by cars parked illegally in every available space. In 2015, the Centre of Oncology of the Lublin Region, located on a hill, underwent renovation, and as a result the facades of the building now bear very intense colours. The massive building can be seen from far away, and it has effectively dominated the city’s skyline, which was previously dominated by much more attractive buildings.
Visitors to Lublin are frightened by the PKS bus station, degraded to the role of an advertising carrier (which, if you look closely, turns out to have an unusually interesting and modern design), even the carefully renovated, striking neo-Baroque railway station is inundated by a vast and chaotic car park. The city of Lublin has a lot of unique, unparalleled architectural gems from different eras; it is a city made up of different layers, each of which has its own character worth noticing. But in order to get to know it, you first have to overcome the surface layer, which is characteristic of most Polish cities: the mess, spatial chaos and lack of care for common spaces.
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