Roger Zubrinich and Judy Peters like to travel. A lot. Prior to the pandemic, the couple would escape the Australian winter and head to Europe for the summer, traipsing through countries via a hire car.
With overseas travel now something of a dream, Roger has decided to revisit some of their destinations in writing. This week, Roger and Judy make their way into the centre of Zamosc in Poland. They find beauty in the town’s design and the colourful burgher houses surrounding the town square, and learn with respect the sad history that hovers in this wonderful place.
The light on the information screen in our leased Peugeot, a malevolent red eye, blinked insistently.
We were driving on the A4 in Poland on our way from Krakow to Zamosc behind a similar car, occupied by four men, that we’d picked up on Krakow’s outskirts. We knew they were aware of us because we could see one turning at times to check for our presence. After driving for about an hour and spending much of our time on the wide roadside verges to avoid head-on collisions, we reached Tarnow. They turned right and we continued on to the E40. Like old friends they acknowledged our separation of ways by waving from open car windows.
Before too long, had we been more credulous, we would have believed we’d accidentally stumbled into a time warp. Even though this journey happened about two decades ago, it might have been two centuries – ignoring the car of course. As we drove through small villages and the scattered outer margins of small rural conurbations, we frequently encountered women, dressed in black, herding honking, irascible geese with the help of a cane.
Equally frequently, we encountered horse-drawn drays and donkey carts loaded with assorted goods that extended from bags of grain to furniture. The drivers, casually holding the reins or occasionally brandishing whips, appeared relaxed and free of modern world imperatives, or perhaps they were bored senseless and engaged in inner considerations of their manifold miseries.
Meanwhile the red eye on the dash continued to blink with implied menace, as it had since we and the car had almost been battered into submission by a disintegrating motorway en route from the German border to Krakow. This portent of the car having high-tech conniptions while we were surrounded by cranky geese and donkey carts was more than trifling. I could envisage the car being pulled behind a horse and cart to a blacksmith’s shop for percussive maintenance. We hoped that the issue was simply the consequence of something deranged behind the dashboard.
As we neared Zamosc it seemed we’d exited the time warp. Fuel stations, occasional factories and other manifestations of modern life became increasingly evident on the roadside. We reached the outer perimeter of the town without issue and, guided by lucky instinct and occasional way finding signs, we managed to arrive more or less in the centre, although at the time we had little idea of how close.
My recollection is that we parked next to a dusty brown, moribund building. Despite arriving on a Friday afternoon, there appeared to be little activity about. With images of honking geese and donkey carts still freshly implanted in memory, I felt quite despondent and probably tried to remind myself, as you do in situations like this, why we chose to come to this forsaken place.
With no other options, stalwarts always, we trudged off to find accommodation. I had visions of a wood hut with a coal-burning stove. Within ten minutes I was reminded that curmudgeonly pessimism serves no useful purpose beyond stoking misery, because we stumbled upon a four-star hotel with rooms available at a price that we could afford. Even better, the female receptionist was charming, helpful and she spoke English. Within 30 minutes we had parked in front of the hotel under a security camera and were happily disporting ourselves in our newly acquired room, offering mutual congratulations on our cleverness in choosing to come to Zamosc.
Within an hour of arriving at the hotel we walked to the Rynek Wielki, the Great Market Square, in the very centre of the old town. Zamosc, population 65,000, is located on the very western edge of Poland and is a mere 80 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. These things I knew, but in conjunction with the time-warped drive from Krakow and the desultory arrival, I had an unarticulated sense that the town was an uninviting outpost in Poland’s nether regions.
Not so. We entered the square from the south-eastern corner and were immediately surprised by its size and elegance. The square measures 100 metres by 100 metres. Its dimensions are emphasised by a sky unencumbered by tall and intrusive buildings, and defined by the elegant, arcaded, three-storeyed burghers’ houses that line the perimeter.
During decades of travel we’ve encountered more squares than exist in a crossword puzzle omnibus, but Rynek Wielki is truly one of the most pleasing. To properly appreciate why, it is useful to travel back in time to a period when horses and carts and gaggles of honking geese had rather more traction than now. Zamosc is not unique in being defined by its history, but any narrative about the town must acknowledge this inescapable fact. The town formally came into being in 1580 when construction began at the direction of Jan Zamoyski, Chancellor of Poland and head of the army, on what was intended to be an ideal town according to Italian Renaissance precepts. The architect was Bernardo Morando from Padua.
Viewed from above, the old town, which measures a modest 400 by 600 metres, is defined by straight lines. The layout is described as ‘rectilinear’ in the UNESCO blurb that accompanied the town’s world heritage listing in 1992. Coincidentally, some years later we visited Sabbioneta in Lombardy, which also had been designed as an ideal Renaissance town, and whose construction had also begun in the second half of the 16th century.
Initially, the most striking feature of the square for us, from the perspective of the south-eastern corner and after registering its size and sense of space, was the town hall situated just off-centre on the northern perimeter. It’s a uniquely attractive four-storeyed building, with a prominent central column supporting a bell tower, compete with a clock and topped by an elegant, oxidised green cupola. The original building was erected in 1591 according to a design by Morando, but subsequently it has been serially modified with additions, accretions and renovations each century since. The distinctive fan-shaped staircase providing access from the square was added in the mid-1700s.
Directly to the right of the town hall are the five most elaborate arcaded burgher houses in the square, and for that matter, in the town that boasts around 55 such houses, possibly the most in any Polish town. Their striking colours; green, yellow, red, blue and cream in sequence from left to right, demand attention, as do the elaborate friezes and bas-reliefs that decorate them. Built in the 1600s, each has been provided with a name. The green house, nearest the Town Hall, is known as the Wilczek House, named after a town councillor, the second is the Rudomicz House, named after a lawyer and physician. Both were early owners of the properties.
The names of the remaining three are derived from their decorations. The red house, the most dramatically coloured and richly ornamented, prominently displays an elaborate bas-relief of the archangel Gabriel, hence the name Under the Angels House. The next, a richly blue-toned house, also displays a bas-relief that informs its name; a representation of a man and a woman, hence the name Under the Married Couple House. The banality of the name obscures the fact that misogyny was very much a preoccupation of the Renaissance man. Legend has it that the owner of the house couldn’t bear his wife so to rid himself of her, he accused her of witchcraft which usually guaranteed the victim’s demise. The smile of the male in the relief is attributed to his apparent success in this egregiously ignoble and troubling endeavour.
The last of the five houses, the richly decorated Under the Madonna House, is named because, and even I guessed this, the house displays a relief of the Madonna cradling a child while standing on a dragon, a symbol of evil. The relief does suggest some rather more imaginative names though. I rather like The Irresponsible Mother House, or maybe the Playing with Fire House, but perhaps caption competitions weren’t common in Zamosc in the 1600s.
These houses are also known as the Armenian houses because they were originally occupied by Armenian merchants, and that takes us back to another element in Zamosc’s rather turbulent history. In the latter half of the 16th century during the rich early years of its development, Zamosc was conveniently located at the crossroads of the trade routes linking Lviv and Kiev in the Ukraine with Lublin and Krakow in Poland. Consequently, the town was granted significant trading privileges. Trade flourished and so did crafts and manufacturing. In 1585 Armenians were granted the right to settle there.
Jews also were granted settlement rights in 1586. Subsequently their population thrived, so much so that in 1610 construction of an elegant, lightly ornamented synagogue began. Remarkably, it’s still there today.
Greeks were granted permission to settle in 1589 so, rather than being an insignificant pimple on Poland’s nether bits, Zamosc was an expanding, vibrant cosmopolitan trading hub with a rich mix of nationalities and a commitment to architectural excellence. It was also an impressive fortress that boasted seven bastions and seven ‘curtains’ joining them in a roughly heptagonal arrangement that was a very good thing indeed because it enabled the town to withstand assaults, first by the Cossacks and later by the Swedes in the 17th century. Sadly, the fortifications, even had they had been intact, and they weren’t, would not have been enough to repel the German invasion during the Second World War.
The internal design logic of the town appeals to the instincts of pedestrians. Central to the chequerboard design are two main streets, Grodzka, which runs east-west, and Ratuszowa, which becomes Solna on the other side of the square, runs north-south. They intersect in the main square.
During our first visit, like opportunists spotting a free drink, we were drawn to these axes whenever we set out to explore the town. Heading west on Grodzka took us to the Zamoyski Palace. It’s a pleasing rather grand three-storeyed building, whitish in colour, with elegant two-storeyed pavilions attached to either end and reminiscent in style and arrangement of many other structures we’ve subsequently visited elsewhere in Europe.
It began life as a castle, built over an eight-year period at the end of the 1600s as a residence for Zamoyski. It suffered severe cosmetic surgery in the mid-1700s that gave it its current rather baroque persona. Inevitably, centuries after his death, Zamoyski is ubiquitous. A large pedestaled statue of the man himself adorns the front of the palace. The structure is typically humble as these statues are. He sits aloft a prancing horse appropriately armoured with an arm raised. The statue was erected in 2006, clear evidence that his presence continues to linger.
Zamoyski appears not to have been over-burdened with humility but perhaps that’s fair enough given his achievements. During his lifetime he was the Polish Chancellor, head of the military, a diplomat and above all, he excelled at accumulating wealth.
He essentially created his own duchy with Zamosc as its focus. It is estimated that he controlled, by the time of his departure from earthly endeavours, through ownership or leasing arrangements, a remarkable 17,500 square kilometres of real estate that included cities and numerous towns and villages. Even more cleverly, he put in place arrangements that guaranteed the trans-generational transfer of his wealth that survived, astonishingly, until 1944 when the arrival of the Russian army saw its demise. Today’s purveyors of trans-generational wealth would salivate at the prospect of being able to put in place similar arrangements to guarantee that the unwashed remain in their rightful places.
Not far from the palace we found another of Zamoyski’s paeans to himself – the cathedral. It’s a fine building that was designed by Morando, the architect responsible for the design of the town itself. It’s quite impressive in an implacably resolute way, rather like its creator. It seems that one of Zamoyski’s primary motivations in arranging for the construction of the cathedral, was to build a family mausoleum, and indeed it is. The largely original interior contains the remains of numerous generations of Zamoyski families.
Next to but separate is the cathedral bell tower, constructed in the 1800s. The oldest and largest of the three bells is named after, well, you know who. Yes, it’s called Jan.
We encountered the cathedral, not during a sight-seeing expedition, but during a search for an internet café, a rather plebeian enterprise when set against the grandeur of Zamoyski’s undertakings and place in Renaissance Poland. That was a couple of decades ago before the advent of smartphones and easily accessible wifi. We did find such a café hidden away in a nondescript building and only identifiable because it had what appeared to be a hand-painted sign above the doorway. The proprietor, a rather shabby but engaging middle-aged man, unusual at that time when internet cafés were the domain of the young, helped us crank up a creaking computer and we did the usual check of bank accounts to ensure we still had money and sent the usual emails to people to tell them we were having a great time and were glad they weren’t there with us.
At the conclusion of business, our host asked if we had business cards that he could add to his collection which he had proudly pinned to a notice board. Alas, we were unimportant people in occupations that only we saw as important and which didn’t even in our wildest dreams merit business cards. Very plebeian indeed.
From its earliest beginnings Zamosc was seen as a centre for learning and culture, a perception that was underscored by the establishment of the grand Zamojski Academy that still exists. Note too, the name; further evidence of a centuries-spanning cult of the personality.
Notwithstanding that, it seems that an emphasis on cultural pursuits had carried over the years because on the Saturday and Sunday nights of our first visit, we had the pleasure of sitting outdoors in a café that had been our refuge after a breakfast debacle when the hotel ran out of food. From there we watched performances on a large stage that had been constructed on the western side of the square. We’d acknowledged the town’s Italian roots and multicultural history by ordering a pizza with Mexican overtones but felt comfortable with that because we’d had a more or less traditional Polish lunch of pierogis, sauerkraut and beef.
We were treated to a performance of popular operatic arias that enticed two drunks near us to join in, loudly and relentlessly, despite the almost violent urgings of two sisters who demanded they shut up. They didn’t, but we loved the performance anyway. The following night we reprised the experience and were treated to poetry readings – in Polish of course, but as Samuel Beckett once wrote, it’s the shape that matters. The readings were followed by an impressive muscle-taxing dance performance, sans a drunken support act, that left us elated and exhausted.
During our stay we also headed east along Grodzka, the longitudinal axis of the town, to the red brick Bastion VII, the best preserved of the original fortifications. Its daunting presence, complete with underground passages, when considered with the restored fortifications surrounding the town, convincingly explains why the town was largely impregnable and able to withstand assaults for a number of centuries.
Traversing Ratuszowa and Solna, the latitudinal axis, took us to the two smaller squares, Rynek Solny, the Salt Square north of the great square and Rynek Wodny, the Water Square to the south. The former was originally used to store salt but it appears that the latter really didn’t have much to do with water at all, although that has been belatedly rectified with the placement of a water feature there.
Our recollection of that first visit was that the town was charming, unhurried, remarkably well-preserved despite its at times troubled history and really quite beautiful in an understated way. On our second recent visit two decades later, it seemed the town had grown into a city, if not technically, certainly in predisposition. Our rather embarrassing entry on that occasion is largely a metaphor for this transition.
We’d driven from Vilnius in Lithuania with a one-night stopover in Siemiatycze in Poland without spotting any geese or donkey carts. The roads were mostly well maintained and homicidal drivers were a rarity this time. When we reached the outskirts of Zamosc it seemed this time as though we were driving through a large and extended conurbation; nothing seemed familiar. The easy entry on our first visit was but a fond memory. The situation was complicated by the fact that our GPS contradicted a Michelin route planner that we used as a backup. The latter said we were about 20 kilometres from our rented apartment, the former said we were almost on the doorstep. Eventually, we prudently stopped so Judy could find someone to confirm our location. It transpired that we were a mere two minutes from our apartment. Embarrassing indeed.
Once we’d settled we spent a couple of days reprising our original sightseeing excursions but this time, wandering without particular intent, simply absorbing the pleasures that this beautiful and durable city has to offer. The pleasure was diminished a little by the foul weather and the renovations in the main square, sections of which were cluttered with scaffolding. Protective sheeting hid the Armenian houses from view, but those matters were minor considerations.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Zamosc is that the old town has survived more or less intact since its inception. It has survived assaults by Cossacks, the Swedes, annexation by the Hapsburgs, Russian control and decades of communist rule. And most notably, it survived what was arguably its darkest time; the barbarism of the Nazi occupation of the city that began in 1939 following the invasion of Poland.
The most enduring and disturbing symbol of those times is located just a little south-east of the old town. Picture this. You’re walking along a broad grey pebbled path lined with aged, lichen blotched trees. The air is dense with moisture and alive with the buzzing of insects. In the distance is a red brick structure in which an entrance, addressed by two heavy white pillars, opens into a courtyard. A large white cross, set upon the far wall of the structure, marks the site.
You enter the structure and realise that it’s circular. Age and semi-permanent moisture from the grassed top fret the brick wall. The low-arched gated doorways of 20 concentrically arranged cells set in the wall open into the centre. On the original wooden gate at the entrance, still clearly visible, are the words ‘Gefangeneng-Durchgangslager Sicherheitspol’ that translate as ‘The Temporary Camp for the Prisoners of Security Police’. Suggesting the structure emanates menace is not indulging in hyperbole.
This is the rotunda, built over six years from 1825 as part of the Zamosc fortifications. During the German occupation following 1939 it served as a prison, a transit camp, and most significantly, as a Nazi killing ground. It was the centrepiece of their regional commitment to ethnic cleansing; of their commitment to freeing up territory for occupation by German settlers.
Many thousands of inhabitants of towns and villages in the Zamosc region were forcibly relocated to labour and concentration camps and an estimated 8000 people were executed in the rotunda; many of whom were subsequently incinerated in the centre of the courtyard. A plaque commemorates the victims and serves as a permanent reminder of these atrocities.
The rotunda is ringed on the outside by an expanse of white crosses. It is estimated that the ashes of thousands of victims are interred there, including Polish soldiers and intellectuals, Jewish victims, and captured Russians soldiers. It’s notable that at the beginning of the war Jews numbered nearly half of the population of the town. Today, only a handful remain.
We spent time in the rotunda and its surrounds during both of our visits to the city, and both times it proved a suitably desolating experience. Immediately before the first we’d driven from Krakow to Auschwitz, and the sombre presence of that terrible place lingered with us and re-asserted its presence in the rotunda. The legacy of our encounters with both places is indelibly imprinted in our collective memories.
Zamosc is a compelling mixture. We had been captured by its beauty and its charm, but also engaged and at times, deeply moved, by its tangible, ever-present past. Travel can be a fickle enterprise. Some places are eminently forgettable, others enjoyable but in time, still forgettable. And some places become preserved in memory. Places like Zamosc.