Paczkow

Paczkow kept its fourteenth-century town wall, and it kept nearly all of it: about twelve hundred metres of circuit, nineteen towers and bastions, three gate towers, running unbroken around a small oval old town, which is one of the most complete medieval urban defences in Poland and the reason the town is marketed as the Polish Carcassonne. The comparison flatters it - Carcassonne is a fortress town on a hill, Paczkow is a flat market town with a wall - but the wall itself is genuine and continuous, with a walkway around parts of it. Inside is a market square with a Renaissance town hall and a fifteenth-century church of St John that was itself fortified, with a parapet and loopholes and, in its wall, a well sunk so that the church could hold out on its own. There is a small gas museum in a former gasworks. The town is quiet and the whole circuit takes an hour to walk.

History

The town was founded on 8 March 1254, when Bishop Tomasz I of Wrocław allowed two Flemings, Henryk and Wilhelm, to lay out a new town beside the old village of Paczków, whose name it took. It suffered floods, fires and plague over the centuries, in 1424 an alliance between Duke John I of Ziębice and the estates of Kłodzko Land was made here, and in 1526 it passed with the Duchy of Nysa to the Habsburgs; the old town and its walls were named a Historic Monument on 13 November 2012 (Wikipedia, Paczków).

What you'll find

• Twelve hundred metres of wall - nineteen towers and three gates, nearly unbroken.
• A fortified church - St John's, with parapet, loopholes and its own well.
• A Renaissance town hall - in the small oval market square.
• A gas museum - in the former municipal gasworks.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

What to expect

The Carcassonne comparison oversells it - this is a flat market town, not a citadel. The walkable sections of wall are partial. Museums keep short hours and close on Mondays. There is little else in town.

Nearby

Nysa is north-east; the Klodzko valley begins to the south.

Key facts