Monuments & mounds

Wojciech Belon Bench in Busko-Zdrój

On the Busko-Zdrój promenade, in front of the cultural centre that bears his name, a man with a guitar sits on a bench shaped like a griffin's neck. This is Wojciech Belon — a singer and poet of the Ponidzie region, co-founder of Wolna Grupa Bukowina and one of the most distinctive voices of the Polish sung-poetry scene.

Busko in his songs

Belon was born on 14 March 1952 in Kwidzyn, but from 1965 his family lived in Busko-Zdrój, where the future songwriter went through school and high school. He sang about the mountains, about passing time and about ordinary people; Busko found its way into his „Ballad of Cześ the Baker", whose bakery stood in the town square. The breakthrough came in the summer of 1971: with Grażyna Kulawik, a friend from his Busko high school, he sang „Ponidzie" at the Tourist Song Fair in Szklarska Poręba and won one of the main prizes — thus began Wolna Grupa Bukowina.

Belon in bronze

The bronze sculpture is the work of the Tarnów-based sculptor Jacek Kucaba; the bench was installed in September 2008. Belon died on 3 May 1985 in Kraków, but was buried in Busko-Zdrój, in the parish cemetery by the Church of the Immaculate Conception. From the bench it is a few hundred metres to the Spa Park and the historic Marconi sanatorium — easy to fit into a walk around the resort.