Lesser Poland Manor Houses Route

Of the roughly 12,000 manor houses that once stood within today's Poland, 2,800 survived — and according to the VisitMałopolska portal, 2,000 of those are wrecks beyond saving. The Lesser Poland Manor Houses Route (Szlak Dwory Małopolski) is a driving route of about 533 km that takes you to the ones that made it, from a small manor in Olkusz to the palace at Paszkówka. The list includes 37 manors and palaces in 35 localities, and their fates are as varied as the region's history.

The route

The route starts in Olkusz and continues through Ściborzyce, Goszyce, Jakubowice, Pławowice, the Tarnów area (Dołęga, Łęg Tarnowski, Kąśna Dolna), Szymbark, the Nowy Sącz region, Podhale (Łopuszna), Orawa (Zubrzyca Górna), western Lesser Poland (Wygiełzów, Płaza, Młoszowa, Krzeszowice), the outskirts of Kraków and the city itself, ending in Wieliczka, Grodkowice and Paszkówka. The buildings are in very different condition: some are museums, others cultural centres, hotels or private homes, and a few stand abandoned. It is not a waymarked trail with signs every kilometre but a list of addresses from which you build your own itinerary.

Highlights

• Rydlówka in Kraków — in November 1900 this manor hosted the wedding of Lucjan Rydel and Jadwiga Mikołajczykówna, which Stanisław Wyspiański turned into his play "The Wedding". The house was only six years old at the time; today it is a museum.
• Łopuszna — a wooden manor from 1790, owned by the Tetmajer family until 1949. The poet Seweryn Goszczyński hid here in 1832; it now houses the Museum of Gentry Culture, a branch of the Tatra Museum.
• Kąśna Dolna — a brick manor from 1833, bought in 1897 by Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The Paderewski Centre displays his original piano, and the manor is surrounded by a 16-hectare park.
• Dołęga — the manor where Józef Retinger waited to be flown out in 1944; Allied planes of Operation "Most" landed just 12 kilometres away. Today it is a branch of the Tarnów museum.
• Goszyce — according to VisitMałopolska the oldest wooden manor in Poland, from the second half of the 17th century. Belina's uhlans stopped here in August 1914; it is not open to visitors.

Did you know?

The route shows how differently the gentry's homes fared after 1945. Some went to museums and kept their furnishings, others were returned to their former owners only in the 1990s, and others became hotels and restaurants — like the manor complex in Tomaszowice. The list also includes buildings moved to open-air museums, such as the manor from Droginia now at Wygiełzów and the 17th-century manor with painted interiors in the Sącz Ethnographic Park.

Tripto tip

Set aside several days for the whole route and split it into sections: the north (Olkusz, Goszyce, Jakubowice), the Tarnów area, Sącz and Podhale, and the west with Kraków. Check the opening hours of individual museums before you go — many manors are private homes or hotels that can only be seen from outside. The project website, dworymalopolski.pl, is currently being rebuilt, so it is best to check up-to-date information directly with the operators of each site.