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Zamość and Lublin are full of thought-provoking historical monuments and quietly charming moments
e’re on the bridge leading from Lublin Castle to the Grodzka Gate into the old city. The guide invites us to look down at something that no longer exists, and to imagine.
Below us on the left is parkland, grass, paths and plants, wrapping around the edge of the city walls. Below on the other side is a large surface car park. This Under Castle area was, she tells us, from the 15th century until the mid-20th century, the Jewish quarter in Lublin city in eastern Before the second World War there were 43,000 Jews in Lublin, a third of its population.
Today an old white willow tree on what was once a street in Podzamcze, the Jewish quarter, is all that remains; a silent witness. A lantern has shone 24-7 in the park since 2004, to remember the lost Jewish community.permanent exhibition at NN Theatre Centre at Grodzka Gate , once a passageway between the Christian and Jewish parts of Lublin.
Through old photographs, documents and oral history, the exhibition explores the former life and lives of the district, the 1942 “liquidation” of the ghetto and extermination of its community, and the righteous. Everywhere we see the faces of those who lived there in the now non-existent quarter, “to understand what we lost”. Many of the photos are from 2,700 glass negatives from before the war, found in an attic in 2012.
Higher fares set to squeeze air travel growthOf the city’s 43,000 Jews, 150 survived and returned after the war, finding nothing there. Today there are about 40 Jews in Lublin. That evocation of nonexistence, of what has gone before us here, occurs over and over while visiting eastern Poland, where waves of buried history are embodied and recalled with a deep sense of place.
Eastern Poland has for centuries been at a cultural, economic and geopolitical crossroads, and sometimes a flashpoint, between eastern Europe/the Baltic and the West. It was stuck between aggressorsduring the war, behind the Iron Curtain for decades, and today is a stone’s throw from the Ukrainian border. On the one hand, travelling through its forests and farms, visiting its beautiful small cities, conflict is a million miles away, but on the other, its troubled history is all around us.
With a long-established Polish community here in Ireland, there are now easy connections between us, both personal and logistical. Ryanair has direct flights from Dublin to Lublin , which is 180km southeast of Warsaw, so a city break or longer trip is a cinch. Getting around by train, bus or car is easy, and although prices have risen for food and drink, it’s much better value than we’re used to.
Summer is peak festival season, but spring or autumn are perfect for visits, with more manageable weather. The Polska tourist board is showing off the attractions of this area, lesser known to Irish visitors than Warsaw or Krakow. But first we divert to Zamość, a city that feels like a large town, about 90km southeast of Lublin and 60km from western Ukraine.
Zamość is a fabulous spot, a Unesco World Heritage City founded in 1580 by Poland’s grand chancellor Jan Zamoyski, a lawyer and politician who married well and often . Designed by Italian architect Bernardo Morando, it’s very much a central European Renaissance town. It retains its original rectilinear street plan, peaceful courtyards, with an expansive 16th-century 100sq m Great Market Square, dominated by a statuesque Town Hall.
The square is bounded by arcaded houses of wealthy Zamość merchants, most particularly the brightly coloured Armenian townhouses. Today the town feels serene, spacious and ordered, with open streets and courtyards. It’s quiet and physically beautiful, perfect for a historical walking tour. About 1,000 of its population of 8,000 live within the old city, where daily life and community is visible.
Today Zamość is state owned, with social housing in ancient buildings. In one courtyard we find a profusion of plants, colourful and cluttered and full of hidden life. Walking the gracious city and soaking in its history and present, we break at a local cafe, Mazagran, which serves speciality coffees, delicious Halva and home-made fudge. We discover the owners Kamila and Bogusław Momot returned home after living in Ireland for eight years, setting up this cafe in 1917.
Later, on a quiet wander around the city in the late evening, hearing hymns through a window, I slip inside. This is a large Franciscan church, and at 6pm on Friday there’s a respectable gathering of predominantly women, young and old. A male voice leads hymns. Multiple restaurants now occupy Great Market Square’s old town houses, with dining in lush historic rooms and cosy basements of the 17th-century Armenian tenement houses.
We eat atwe have Polish food, rich meats and vegetables, schnitzel and żurek . Everywhere in these parts you’ll find cebularz, tasty onion pastries often served with garlic butter. Originally a 19th-century Jewish speciality from Lublin, the wheat flatbread is generously topped with caramelised onions and poppy seeds. Here in Zamość, close to border with Ukraine, menus feature Ukrainian pierogi; apparently before the invasion they were called Russian pierogi.
The Renaissance Hotel is comfortable and gracious. Early on sunny Friday evening before leaving town, there’s action on Zamość’s Great Market Square: more than 100 people in historical costumes, some carrying placards. As we watch, they form into a procession, mounting a temporary stage to recite a historical re-enactment. And so back to Lublin.
So much to do in this vibrant, attractive boho city, with 70 per cent of the 14th- and 15th-century old town preserved. Meandering between Grodzka Gate and Krakowska Gate on a guided walking tour of the Old Town, you come across various symbols of the city: the tin rooster topping neo-Gothic Trinitarian Tower, and multiple tiny goat sculptures. The goat on Lublin’s coat of arms references a local legend about a goat saving children during a Tatar invasion.
On Grodzka Street, we look up to find a tightrope walker balancing between buildings: the striking sculpture was created by Polish artist Jerzy Kędziora and represents Jasza Mazur from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Magician of Lublin. It was installed for Carnaval Sztukmistrzów, the city’s festival of magic and circus, one of many in a city of festivals.. It was historically a prison, and during the war members of the resistance were incarcerated.
Today it’s the National Museum in Lublin, and you could spend hours within the complex, with permanent exhibitions of history, art and folk art, and about the prison. An ancient wooden table is marked by a deep, burned black pawprint of the devil, according to a 17th-century local legend. The Donjon, a 13th-century Romanesque round tower, has exhibits as you climb up to an observation tower with terrific views of the Old Town.
The castle’s Gothic chapel of the Holy Trinity is filled with stunning 15th-century Byzantine-Ruthenian frescoes. Then it’s time for lunch on the terrace at charming Mandragora Jewish Restaurant, a delightfully eclectic and home-like spot, featuring Jewish cuisine and recipes dating back a century. This restaurant figures inA Polish menu highlighting the connection to the film A Real PainMuseum, a large folk park 6km west of the city in the Czechówka river valley.
A fascinating glimpse into the region’s rural and village life and heritage, there are reconstructions or refurbishments of buildings, from humble cottage to manor house, a windmill, farm buildings, craft workshops and a 1930s provincial small town. Afterwards we have a hearty lunch sitting outside the museum’s restaurant,a Nazi concentration and extermination camp. From the road you can see the majestic and chilling Monument to the Victims, a stone sculpture of an abstract figure reaching skyward.
Between October 1941 and July 1944 more than 130,000 deportees went through Majdanek’s gates. About 78,000 of them perished there, 60,000 of them Polish, Czech, Slovak and German Jews. In some of the barracks, as well as photos and documents, there are sculptures by inmates. There are marks still on the walls of the gas chambers.
Inside the barracks, the heat is almost choking. However, Majdanek was not where most of Lublin’s Jews were killed; they had been murdered before Himmler initiated Majdanek in 1941. You can visit alone or with a guide; ours provided context and depth. A less well known site of hell than some others, it is therefore less crowded and very moving.
One of Poland’s largest regional beer producers since 1846, Perla uses local hop varieties to make 39,000 bottles and cans a day. Beer was brewed on the site of a former monastery here and though it’s no longer a working brewery, it’s worth a visit.
Guided tours for small groups explore the subterranean rooms of the former brewery, including some promo and lots of information about the hops, filtration and fermentation, plus you get to sample some delicious beers in the bar created in a former storage room deep in the bowels of the complex. Today Perla in Lublin has events including an outdoor cinema during the summer, and apartments to rent, as well as the stylish and buzzing PerłowaAfterwards, strolling the city streets back towards Hotel Wieniawski near the Old Town, the city is lively with busy restaurants and bars.
We come upon Lithuanian Square, and its showy, synchronised multimedia fountain, and take photographs of the illuminated “I Love Lublin” structure. Across from this is the Portal, the international art installation connecting cities with live video streams. And there we watch the antics of Dubliners on North Earl Street, live. It upends notions of place and disparate lives, seeing ourselves as others do.
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