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Selected city: sandomierz
Churches & monasteries
Sandomierz
This bare brick church on St James's Hill looks austere, but it is one of the oldest churches in Poland built entirely of brick. Dominican friars began building St James the Apostle's Church around 1226, combining Romanesque forms with som…
Churches & monasteries
Sandomierz
From the outside, Sandomierz Cathedral shows a Baroque façade and brick facing from the 19th century. Its greatest treasure is in the chancel, though: Byzantine-Ruthenian wall paintings from the first half of the 15th century. Paintings in…
Hidden gemCastles
Sandomierz
On the night of 2–3 April 1656, the retreating Swedish garrison left 300 hundredweight of gunpowder in Sandomierz Castle. It exploded while soldiers and camp followers were looting the building, killing about 500 people — historians count…
Museums
Sandomierz
The Diocesan Museum in Sandomierz is housed in Długosz House, a late Gothic building from 1476 funded by the chronicler Jan Długosz right next to the cathedral. The star of the collection is "Madonna and Child with St Catherine of Alexandr…
Hidden gemLandmarks
Sandomierz
Of the four gates that once led into Sandomierz, only this one survives. The Gothic Opatów Gate, built under King Casimir the Great, is now the entrance to the Old Town and one of the best viewpoints in the city: from the terrace at the to…
Hidden gemNature
Sandomierz
Queen Jadwiga’s Ravine (Wąwóz Królowej Jadwigi, roughly “VON-voos kroo-LOH-vey yad-VEE-gee”) in Sandomierz is the town’s largest loess ravine: a sunken green corridor about half a kilometer long, with earthen walls several stories high and…
Landmarks
Sandomierz
The plans for this college in Sandomierz were drawn in Rome, and one of the designs is still kept today in the National Library of France in Paris. The long white building on the edge of the Vistula escarpment has housed a school since 160…
Churches & monasteries
Sandomierz
Every evening – so the local tradition handed down in Sandomierz goes – the cathedral bell remembers those who fell at the Battle of Varna and those who drowned in the Vistula. The tall stone bell tower beside the Cathedral Basilica was bu…
Nature
Sandomierz
The rocks beneath your feet here settled on the floor of a Cambrian sea about 500 million years ago. The Pepper Mountains (Góry Pieprzowe), known locally as "Pieprzówki", form a steep escarpment above the Vistula about 2.5 km from Sandomie…
Old towns & squares
Sandomierz
Sandomierz Market Square is not flat: between its upper and lower corners the difference in height reaches 15 metres, so the houses around it stand as if on steps. Beneath them run cellars and passages dug into the loess, and in one of the…
Monuments & mounds
Sandomierz
The Ring in Sandomierz is one of the town's most unusual monuments: an openwork wrought-iron setting holding a huge cabochon of striped flint, in which you can see the letter "S" from Sandomierz's logo. The structure weighs 80 kg and has s…
Landmarks
Sandomierz
The Underground Tourist Route in Sandomierz (say "san-DOH-myesh") is a 470-meter (1,540-foot) walk through medieval and Renaissance merchants' cellars hidden beneath the town's Market Square, reaching 12 meters (40 feet) below the cobbles.…
Other
Sandomierz
The oldest engravings and paintings show Sandomierz from the Vistula — and that is exactly the view you get from the wooden boat "Sandomierka". It is a replica of a traditional raftsmen's dubas run by the Sandomierka Foundation; it takes u…
Old towns & squares
Sandomierz
Sandomierz Market Square (Rynek in Sandomierz, pronounced roughly “san-DOH-myesh”) is the sloping heart of one of Poland’s oldest and best-preserved towns. A Gothic town hall crowned with a lacy Renaissance parapet stands in the middle, pa…
Other
Sandomierz
Loess gorges, the Vistula and endless orchards: the Sandomierz Apple Trail turns this landscape into a route to explore, from fruit farms with their own juices and preserves, through heritage rooms and craft workshops, to vineyards and far…
Other
Sandomierz
"Sandomierz wine is at times better than Moravian," wrote the 16th-century botanist Marcin of Urzędów. Tax records suggest that as many as 150 hectares of vineyards may then have grown within the bounds of old Sandomierz. After centuries o…
Old towns & squares
Sandomierz
Sandomierz Old Town (say "san-DOH-myesh") is one of Poland's loveliest historic centers: a hilltop town above the Vistula River with a sloping Market Square, a red-brick Gothic Town Hall crowned by a Renaissance parapet, a medieval city ga…
Landmarks
Sandomierz
The Needle's Eye (Ucho Igielne), also called the Dominican Gate, is a narrow passage through Sandomierz's old defensive walls, leading west from the Old Town towards the Dominican friary at St James's Church. It is the only surviving wicke…