Opatow

The collegiate church of St Martin at Opatow was built in the twelfth century in sandstone and is one of the more complete Romanesque buildings in Poland, with two west towers and a plain interior later given baroque furnishing. Its famous object is the Opatow Lament, a bronze relief of about 1536 on the tomb of Krzysztof Szydlowiecki, chancellor of the Crown, showing some forty figures - family, courtiers, envoys - grouped in mourning around a table, a Renaissance work of unusual narrative density and among the best bronzes in the country. Beneath the town runs a system of merchants' cellars on several levels, dug from the fifteenth century for storing goods on the trade route east, and around four hundred metres of it has been connected and opened as an underground tourist route. The Warsaw Gate of the sixteenth-century town wall survives on the edge of the square.

History

Opatów was founded as a stronghold of the early Polish state in the late 10th or early 11th century, is first mentioned in 1189, and the collegiate church of St Martin was built here in the 12th century. In 1232 Duke Henry the Bearded gave it to the Bishop of Lubusz, it received the status of a city in 1282, and in 1514 it passed to Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, who restored it, ringed it with a wall and built a castle; in the 16th century it had about 4,000 people and was the largest town of the province (Wikipedia, Opatów).

Highlights

• A Romanesque collegiate church - twelfth-century sandstone with two west towers.
• The Opatow Lament - about forty mourning figures in a bronze relief of 1536.
• Underground cellars - four hundred metres of merchants' storage, walked as a route.
• The Warsaw Gate - a surviving piece of the sixteenth-century wall.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Good to know

The underground route is guided, timed and can be cold and low in places. The church closes during services. The town is small and quiet. Labelling is mostly Polish.

Nearby

Krzyztopor is south-west; Sandomierz is east.

Key facts