Small Town, Big Story: Polish Settlements Through Time
A small town is most often associated with a charming market square, picturesque townhouses, monuments, a homely atmosphere. But small settlements also have other faces: this form of urban development inspired investors, architects and urban planners, who designed them for various purposes, forms, places, even… within other cities.
A small town: charming, picturesque, full of monuments, an unhurried life, surrounded by meadows, fields, hills. In a small town, everyone knows and bumps into one another on the market square or in the quiet streets, dominated by the towers of the church and town hall. This image of a small town is usually in the minds of those who visit and explore small towns but rarely live in them. Nowadays, however, there is more and more talk about the need for deglomeration, about the fact that life in overcrowded large cities is increasingly difficult, more expensive and less healthy, while in small towns there is still untapped potential. The trend of ‘escaping’ from small towns developed along with our political transformation – young people, in search of new opportunities, willingly moved out of their hometowns to larger cities, where better education and prospects for good jobs awaited them. Will there be a renaissance of small towns today, when many people can work remotely?
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Zamość, bird’s eye view, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum
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Before that happens, it’s worth taking a closer look at Polish small towns because they have very different faces! They differ, for example, by the number of inhabitants – in the account below, there are small towns with a population of less than a thousand and those with as many as 35,000 people (some small towns have expanded over the centuries). The idea of a small town is also sometimes used, especially today, to create unusual housing estates built even within larger cities – these self-sufficient development areas are designed to be independent, giving residents the impression of living in a smaller community. The most popular are, of course, old, historic, atmospheric towns, perfect for holidays. But it’s also worth remembering that the form of a town – a small, self-sufficient settlement – has inspired and, importantly, continues to inspire investors and designers.
A medieval town – Szydłów
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Kraków Gate, Szydłów, photo: Andrzej Sidor / Forum
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Situated between Kielce and Tarnów, Szydłów is called the ‘Polish Carcassonne’ thanks to its preserved 14th-century urban layout with numerous medieval buildings. Crossing the massive Kraków Gate transports you back in time: visitors have the chance to experience the 14th-century walls of the castle and two Gothic churches, can see the ruins of the church and hospital of the Holy Spirit from the early 16th century and visit the late Renaissance synagogue. The turbulent history of Polish lands, the wars and battles that rolled through them, meant that few medieval monuments, and even fewer entire urban layouts, have survived in Poland to this day. The atmosphere of Szydłów helps one feel the spirit of history.
A renaissance town – Sandomierz
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Sandomierz, bird’s eye view, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum
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A Renaissance town picturesquely situated on a high bank of the Vistula River, Sandomierz is one of the best-known centres of this type in Poland, long valued as a tourist destination for enthusiasts of exploring historical monuments. Numerous monuments in Sandomierz have priceless historical value, from medieval walls and Gothic temples, monasteries, a hospital and a castle through the Gothic-Renaissance town hall located in the middle of the market square surrounded by townhouses representing almost every era of the past. In Sandomierz, you can wander along underground routes, visit the 15th-century Jan Długosz House and the synagogue from the 18th century; you can admire the panorama of the city from the Opatowska Gate terrace and the Vistula from the foot of the castle. The unique atmosphere of the town also inspires filmmakers, who placed a popular TV series here, and literary artists, such as Zygmunt Miłoszewski, who built a criminal intrigue around one of the paintings from the Sandomierz cathedral.
A picturesque town – Kazimierz Dolny
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Kazimierz Dolny, bird’s eye view, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum
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No one who is looking for peace and quiet in a town will go to Kazimierz Dolny on a summer holiday weekend. The crowds of tourists who visit this undoubtedly charming town throughout the warm season contradict the idea of the slow life that should take place in such a town. At the same time, they indicate how much we need contact with beautiful, historic architecture integrated into a picturesque landscape, because this is exactly what is offered by this town founded by Casimir the Just (Kazimierz Sprawiedliwy) in the 12th century. Valuable monuments of the Renaissance and Mannerism, intimate historical buildings, plenty of nooks, crannies and cobbled streets climbing the surrounding hills – this is (if not for the crowds of other tourists) an ideal place for atmospheric walks. Kazimierz also offers contact with beautiful landscapes – this is where you can venture between the slopes of loess ravines, admire the wide panorama of the Vistula, visit old quarries or climb the castle hill. In the summer, numerous cultural events take place on the Kazimierz market square, often related to folk culture, and fairs and concerts are organized.
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Piast Castle of the Silesian Piasts, Brzeg, bird’s eye view, photo: Sławomir Mielnik / PAP
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The Duke of Wrocław, Henry III the White (Henryk III Biały), was granted a location privilege to this Lower Silesian settlement in 1248. It was then that the construction of a defensive settlement surrounded by walls began, one which until the second half of the 17th century was the capital of the independent Duchy of Brzeg under the rule of one of the Silesian Piast dynasties, who ensured the city’s prosperity. It is to them that we owe one of the most valuable monuments preserved in Brzeg to this day – the Silesian Piast Castle, built in the 14th century, later expanded many times, as evidenced by the extremely impressive, three-storey gate building from the mid-16th century, whose façade is decorated with the coats of arms and busts of Silesian princes and two full-figure representations of the founders, the royal couple George II (Jerzy II) and his wife Barbara Hohenzollern. Today, Brzeg is a charming town full of historical buildings – not only valuable monuments but also ‘ordinary’ old homes and townhouses, gracefully supplemented with newer buildings over the centuries. Its picturesque nooks encourage deviating from the main tracks.
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Sejny, photo: Andrzej Sidor / Forum
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Sejny is located in the north-eastern part of Podlaskie Voivodeship, among the forests and lakes of this far corner of Poland, right next to the Lithuanian border. This region was once inhabited by the Yotvingians, and the name of the town comes from their language: the word ‘seina’ in the Yotvingian language means grass growing on the banks and bends of a river. The beginnings of the settlement date back to the 16th century, when these lands were given to Prince Iwan Wiśniowiecki, hetman of the royal army of Sigismund the Old (Zygmunt Stary). In 1593, the Sejny estate was bought by the Przełom forester and prior governor Jerzy Grodziński, and he founded a town here, which he soon gave to the Dominican Order. The settlement owes to them not only the church and monastery (expanded many times) but also the years of glory from the 17th to the 19th centuries, when Sejny was an important educational centre in the region. Today, the small, largely historical buildings of the town are dominated by the towers of its most valuable monument: the church and monastery, the current structure of which dates mainly to the 17th century. Although far from large cities and important centres, Sejny is a place of valued cultural and artistic activities, including the centre ‘Pogranicze – sztuk, kultur, narodów’ (Borderland of Arts, Cultures, Nations, which also runs the International Centre for Dialogue in nearby Krasnogruda, in Czesław Miłosz’s manor) and international organ festivals that are held here.
A town of former industry – Gorlice
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Gorlice Market Square at dawn, photo: Geo28 / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
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As in the case of many cities in southern Poland, the history of Gorlice reflects the craft and trade beginnings of this settlement; its expansion in the 16th century, squandered by the destruction of the Swedish Deluge; and its later development in the era of the Industrial Revolution. Religious themes are important to the history of Gorlice as the city was an important centre of Calvinism at a time when the followers of this religion were not free to practise it everywhere. But the mid-19th century is key in its history, for it was then that Ignacy Łukasiewicz, a pharmacist to whom the world owes the invention of the kerosene lamp, had his workshop here. The oil industry continued to develop in Gorlice in the 19th century and contributed to the development of the city. The National Oil Company (Krajowe Towarzystwo Naftowe), a tool factory, drilling and oil machines and a crude oil distillery were in operation here. Although wars and changes in the world economy ended this period of prosperity, Gorlice has preserved beautiful buildings from those eras, and if you combine this with the exceptionally picturesque location of the northern border of the Low Beskid (Beskid Niski) mountains, the result is a charming town offering many attractions with an interesting history and a view of the mountains.
A blue-collar town – Nikiszowiec
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Nikiszowiec, Katowice, photo: Przemysław Jendroska / AG
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One of the best-preserved workers’ estates built in Poland during the Industrial Revolution, although today a district of Katowice, was designed as a completely separate entity, connected, like most similar investments at the time, not with a city but with a workplace. In the case of Nikiszowiec, it was a hard-coal mine of the Georg von Giesche’s Erben company, whose owners brought the architects Georg and Emil Zillmann, brothers, from Charlottenburg to Upper Silesia. They designed Giszowiec first (the first miners’ estate in Katowice) and later Nikiszowiec. The first houses in the estate were put into use in 1911. An orderly layout of low-rise buildings, even-sided squares arranged around internal courtyards and brick facades with characteristic painted window frames – these are the characteristic features of Nikiszowiec. The fact that it was designed as an independent town is evidenced by the estate’s being equipped with all the necessary functions – a church, shops, a school, a bathhouse, etc. It was admittedly not about their comfort but rather about ensuring that they would not leave the vicinity of their workplace and making them more easily controlled and supervised, but today there are cafés, for example, frequented by tourists in the arcades of the Nikiszowiec main square.
A multicultural town – Bielsk Podlaski
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St Michael the Archangel Eastern Orthodox Church, Bielsk Podlaski, photo: Wojciech Wójcik / Forum
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On the surface, Bielsk Podlaski can hardly be considered a picturesque and sleepy town: there are many industrial plants operating here, the city is growing and trying to play the role of an important centre in the region (in 1929, the city had 5,500 inhabitants, whereas today there are 25,000). However, some quarters of historical (including wooden) buildings and the monuments that exist here testify to the rich and multicultural past of this border town. In the 16th century, there were over 260 craft guilds in the city, which were the main source of income for the inhabitants. After the fires and the Swedish Deluge in the 17th and 18th centuries, the city began to build brick buildings, although the 15th-century urban layout of the oldest part of the settlement has been preserved. Among the monuments of Bielsk are the Baroque town hall, a park, a 19th-century inn and wooden houses from the early 20th century. However, the Bielsk churches, both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, are a particularly valuable collection. There are many of these in the city, their history dating back to the 15th century, when communities of many denominations lived here (the Jewish population was murdered during World War II). In this way, the city’s panorama is still created by slender Catholic church towers and onion-shaped Eastern Orthodox church domes.
A postmodern town – Różany Potok estate, Poznań
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Różany Potok estate, Poznań, photo: Anna Cymer
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In the 1990s, it seemed that modernist urbanism with loose housing-estate developments composed of identical housing blocks built without regard to street locations was a thing of the past. On the wave of postmodernism and an aversion to the monotonous, grey architecture of the 1970s, detail was restored to buildings, and housing estates began to be modelled on old towns. It was then that a housing estate for employees of the university was built on the northern outskirts of the Adam Mickiewicz University campus in Poznań’s Morasko district. It was designed by Marian Fikus, who gave the complex the unusual form of an intimate little town, with a small square in the centre and buildings of varied scale and form. The tallest buildings in the Różany Potok Estate are four storeys high, and there are also single-family and terraced houses.
The houses in the centre of the estate were equipped with commercial ground floors; green areas, courtyards, intimate passages and connectors were planned between the buildings. The traditional spatial layout of the estate with streets intersecting at right angles and houses arranged in frontages are all an obvious allusion to the past. In a similar fashion, the architect drew the shapes of the houses and the detail complementing them from past eras. But not directly: he paraphrased, modified, was inspired by their forms but did not copy them. In this way, one of the most interesting realisations of Polish postmodernism – a town composed of decorated houses of different colours, textures, sizes and shapes – was created on the outskirts of Poznań.
A 15-minute town – Live in the City of Kraków
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Wizjonerów Mieszkaj estates, photo: press materials © 2015–2021 Mieszkaj w mieście
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A 15-minute city – the idea is not new, but it is certainly experiencing a renaissance in the 2020s. In the face of the climate catastrophe and the ever-increasing number of city dwellers, designing them in such a way as to minimize the need for a daily commute over long distances (as is usually the case today) seems to be a good solution. According to the concepts considered today to be the best for people and the environment, the ideal city is one in which most of life’s needs can be met near home, within a short walking distance. Although this vision still seems to border on utopia, there are investors trying to put it into practice – as in the Mieszkaj w Mieście (Live in the City) estate located on the north-western outskirts of Kraków.
Although the name implies a modern lifestyle, you can find a contemporary version of a ‘town’ here. Buildings that are not too high, pedestrian streets with shops, greenery, the intimate character of the area and plenty of places giving residents a chance to create small communities. The Mieszkaj w Mieście housing estate designed by the Medusa Group studio is a large investment, the implementation of which is to take about 10 years. In total, on an area of approximately 20 hectares, up to 2,200 dwelling units are to be built, as well as office buildings, parking lots, shops, a community centre, etc. The investor based their concept on the idea of a 15-minute city, assuming that this is precisely what can provide today’s residents with well-being, build interpersonal relationships and provide a comfortable place to live.
Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar