Lanckorona

Lanckorona is a village on a steep hill whose market square slopes noticeably and is lined with single-storey wooden houses of the nineteenth century, built after a fire, with wide overhanging eaves carried on brackets over the pavement - a local building form that survived here in a quantity found almost nowhere else in Poland. The whole layout is protected. Above the village in beech woods are the ruins of a fourteenth-century castle built under Kazimierz Wielki, now walls and a fragment of tower with a view over the Beskid foothills. The village became an artists' and weekenders' place from the 1970s and has a reputation for that - galleries, a couple of cafes, a slightly self-conscious quiet - and it is known locally as a spot associated with folk tales and, in the season, with mist sitting below it in the valleys. It is on the route between Krakow and Kalwaria and works as a half day.

History

According to the chronicler Jan Długosz, Casimir III the Great built the castle to guard the road to Kraków and the border with the Duchy of Oświęcim, and it already stood when the parish church of Saint John the Baptist was founded in 1336. In 1602 Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, voivode of Kraków and Lanckorona, began the monastery and Passion trails of nearby Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, and on 22 February 1771 the Bar Confederates defended Lanckorona and its castle against the Russian army (Wikipedia, Lanckorona).

What to look for

• Wooden houses with deep eaves - nineteenth-century, in a rare surviving concentration.
• A sloping market square - the whole layout protected.
• Castle ruins above - fourteenth-century walls in beech woods, with a view.
• Galleries and cafes - the artists' colony that grew here from the 1970s.

When to go

April to October; autumn for the mist. Half a day.

Before you go

It is a small village and can be seen in two hours. Weekends bring day-trippers from Krakow and the parking is limited. The castle is a modest ruin reached by a steep path. Several cafes open only at weekends outside summer.

Nearby

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska is six kilometres away; Wadowice beyond it.

Key facts