Mouse Tower in Kruszwica

According to the chroniclers, the cruel Prince Popiel was eaten by mice in a tower above Lake Gopło – except that today's Mouse Tower was built almost four hundred years after the legend supposedly took place. It is an octagonal brick tower 32 metres high, the only surviving part of King Casimir the Great's castle in Kruszwica. From the top, on a clear day, you can see Inowrocław, Strzelno and Radziejów, with the bays and islands of Lake Gopło below.

History: a castle on the Teutonic border

The first masonry tower here, round and built of stone, dates from the mid-13th century. The present brick tower went up around 1350, when Casimir the Great built a new castle on the site of an old stronghold. It was roughly rectangular, with walls 11 metres high, a moat and a palisade, and the tower in the north-west corner served as a lookout and the defenders' last refuge. The castle guarded the border with the State of the Teutonic Order, and after the Peace of Toruń in 1466 it became simply the seat of the local castellan and royal administrator.

During the Swedish invasion known as the Deluge the castle was held by the Swedes for two years, and when they withdrew in 1657 they destroyed the town and the fortress. Only the tower and fragments of the walls survived. The first restoration work was carried out in 1802, and in 1896 the tower was strengthened and opened to visitors. It has been Kruszwica's main viewpoint ever since.

What to see

• The tower – octagonal outside, round inside.
• The terrace at the top, with views of Lake Gopło, the Rzępowski Peninsula, the town and the Kuyavian plain.
• Remains of the castle walls on Castle Hill.
• The holes in the walls, which look like little windows but are actually putlog holes left by the builders' scaffolding.

Legend and interesting facts

The story of Popiel, eaten by mice as punishment, was already told by the 12th-century chronicler Gallus Anonymus, but only the later Greater Poland Chronicle placed it in Kruszwica. A similar tale of a wicked ruler devoured by mice in a tower is told in Germany about the Mäuseturm in Bingen on the Rhine, so for a long time the legend was thought to have been borrowed from the West. The historian Jacek Banaszkiewicz showed, however, that the Polish version predates the German "mouse legends" and grows out of older, shared symbolism. Local guides also offer other explanations for the name, such as a derivation from a family called the Myszkowie.

Tripto tip

The tower stands at the base of the Rzępowski Peninsula, a few minutes' walk from the centre of Kruszwica. You reach the top by stairs inside the tower, so be ready for a climb. Visits and cruises on Lake Gopło aboard the "Rusałka" are run by the Kruszwica branch of the PTTK tourist society (tel. +48 52 35 15 380) – check current opening hours and ticket prices with them. Allow about an hour for the tower and a walk round the hill, then cross to the other bank to see the Romanesque collegiate church from the 12th century.