Technical monuments

Tarnówki Mill in Grodzisko

In Grodzisko near Skała, within the Ojców National Park, the Tarnówki mill worked for centuries – today one of 12 preserved monuments of water milling in the Prądnik Valley. The site belongs to private owners, who run an agritourism farm in the adjoining building and look after its equipment.

The valley of forty mills

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, along the Prądnik – a river of merely 33 kilometres – about 40 water mills operated. The Ojców National Park is sometimes called an open-air museum of old mills – it is hard to find another valley in Poland with such a concentration of these structures.

On the same water since the 15th century

Milling at this spot is documented as early as the 15th century; the present building was constructed in the mid-19th century. Its interior equipment has survived, including pre-war roller mills. The drive was converted from a water wheel to a turbine, and the sluice was replaced with a concrete weir. The millrace, a branch of the Prądnik, remains passable and still powers the machinery.

A road from Ojców leads to the mill; nearby lies the hermitage of Blessed Salome, a complex of 1677–1691 built through the efforts of Father Sebastian Piskorski on the site of a medieval convent of the Poor Clares. The nuns settled here in 1260 thanks to the endowment of Duchess Salomea, sister of Bolesław the Chaste. A few kilometres further on await Pieskowa Skała castle and the main part of the Ojców National Park.