Maria Dąbrowska Manor House in Russów

Maria Dąbrowska, author of "Nights and Days", was born in this manor house near Kalisz in 1889 and spent her childhood and youth here until 1907. The house never belonged to her family – her father, Józef Szumski, managed the estate. Since 1979 it has been the literary branch of the Regional Museum of the Kalisz Land, with recreated interiors and a 4-hectare park.

History: from ruin to museum

At the beginning of 1889 Józef Szumski took up the post of manager of Kazimierz Waliszewski's estate in Russów. At the time the village belonged to the Zborów municipality and the Tykadłów parish; today it is part of Żelazków municipality. Dąbrowska left Russów as a young woman, but the Kalisz countryside kept returning in her fiction, memoirs and "Diary" – the manor and the village appear in "Nights and Days", in the stories "Folk from Over There" and in "The Smile of Childhood".

The idea of a museum arose after the writer's death in 1965. It was not easy: until 1953 the house was used by a primary school, then for more than a decade it was occupied by tenants and fell into ruin. In 1971 a Maria Dąbrowska Memorial Room opened in the rebuilt house, sharing it with a farmers' club. It became a branch of the museum in 1979. Before the writer's centenary in 1989 the porches were added and shutters restored, and the last part of the house was only recovered from tenants in 2010–2011.

What to see

• Recreated interiors from Dąbrowska's time: the writer's room, her father's room, the drawing room, a bedroom and the manor kitchen.
• Photographs, manuscripts and personal documents showing her ties to the Kalisz region.
• A 4-hectare landscape park, restored from the late 1980s, with paved paths.
• An open-air museum with six wooden buildings, including the "sołek" granary from the second half of the 18th century.

Tripto tips

• Opening hours (as of October 2026): 1 May–31 October Tue–Fri 10:00–15:30, Sat–Sun 10:00–17:00; 1 November–30 April Tue–Sun 10:00–15:30. Closed Mondays, free admission on Tuesdays, last entry 30 minutes before closing.
• Tickets: PLN 20 standard, PLN 12 reduced, PLN 10 group, PLN 40 family; guide PLN 50. A combined ticket for all branches of the museum costs PLN 30 and is valid for 2 days.
• Getting there: Russów 49, Żelazków municipality. The bus from Kalisz bus station takes about 20 minutes; the stop on national road 25 is about 550 m from the museum. There is a car park in front of the park gate and a wheelchair ramp to the house.
• Allow 1.5–2 hours for the house, park and open-air museum. Reading "Nights and Days" beforehand makes the visit far richer.