Rybitwy Windmill

This lone wooden post mill in the fields on the western shore of Lake Lednica was already at work in the 19th century, and today it belongs to the museum that looks after the cradle of the Piast state. Rybitwy Windmill has no ticket office or exhibition, but its silhouette above the fields is one of the most distinctive views on the Piast Trail between Poznań and Gniezno.

History: a mill taken over by the museum

Rybitwy is an old village – it already appears in the Bull of Gniezno of 1136, one of the earliest documents to list Polish place names. The windmill is much younger: the register of industrial heritage lists it as a post mill under the name "Rybitwy (Ganina)", with its operation recorded in 1888. In 1988–1992 the Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica took over the plot in Rybitwy with the historic windmill; at the same time it set up the ethnographic site in nearby Moraczewo. The land it acquired already held other relocated buildings, including a school from Czerniejewo and an 18th-century cottage from Marianowo – these are now used as homes, and the windmill is the only one to keep its original form.

What to look for

A post mill (Polish: koźlak) is a type of windmill whose entire wooden body turned on a single massive post so the sails could face the wind. On one side you can see the long tail pole the miller used to swing the whole structure round. Note the wooden sails and the plank cladding typical of Greater Poland post mills. Compare it with the three post mills at Moraczewo: they differ in proportions and details, though they all worked the same way.

Tripto tip

The windmill can only be viewed from outside, from the road or the edge of the field – please don't walk into the crops or climb on the old structure. A stop takes 10–15 minutes; the best light is in the late afternoon, and flowering rapeseed in May makes the finest backdrop. Rybitwy is a few minutes' drive from Lednogóra, so the windmill fits easily into a trip to Ostrów Lednicki, the Greater Poland Ethnographic Park in Dziekanowice and the windmills at Moraczewo. If you want to see inside a post mill, head to the Dziekanowice open-air museum and check its current opening hours.