Kruszwica Mouse Tower

The Mysia Wieza is a thirty-two-metre octagonal brick tower on the shore of Lake Goplo, the only substantial piece left of a castle built for Kazimierz Wielki in the fourteenth century and dismantled after Swedish damage. The legend that gives it the name is much older than the building and belongs to the chronicles: Popiel, a cruel ruler of the Goplans, is said to have been besieged in a tower here and eaten alive by mice, after which the Piast dynasty took over - a founding story with clear moral intent and no historical support, and the tower postdates the supposed events by four centuries. It is climbable and the view runs the length of Goplo, a narrow lake about twenty-five kilometres long that was a major early route and is now a landscape park with large bird populations. Boats run on the lake in season and the collegiate church nearby is a Romanesque granite building of the 1120s.

What you actually see

• A thirty-two-metre brick tower - the surviving fragment of a fourteenth-century castle.
• A view down Goplo - the narrow lake running twenty-five kilometres.
• The Popiel legend - a ruler eaten by mice, from the chronicles, not from history.
• A Romanesque collegiate church - granite, from the 1120s, nearby.

When to go

May to September. Two hours.

Honest expectations

The tower is the only surviving part of the castle and the climb is narrow and steep. The mouse legend is folklore and the building is four hundred years too late for it. The town is small with limited facilities.

Nearby

Biskupin and Gniezno are north; Inowroclaw is west.