Stary Sacz

Stary Sacz was founded by Kinga, a Hungarian princess who married a Polish duke and after his death endowed and entered a convent of Poor Clares here in 1280; the nuns have been there ever since, which makes it one of the longest continuously occupied religious houses in Poland. The convent is walled, with a Gothic church, a baroque interior and a pulpit shaped as a tree of Jesse, and a museum of its treasures and manuscripts. The town around it is small, with a cobbled market square of low arcaded houses and no through traffic, and it has kept its scale better than most because industry went to Nowy Sacz instead. A large open altar built for the papal visit of 1999 stands on meadows below the town and is used for open-air events. There is a narrow-gauge line and a good regional museum in a seventeenth-century burgher house.

History

Duchess Kinga, daughter of King Béla IV of Hungary and wife of Duke Bolesław V the Chaste, received the land of Sącz from her husband in 1257, the year taken as the town's founding, and she founded a convent of the Poor Clares here. In 1999 Pope John Paul II celebrated a mass here dedicated to Saint Kinga, attended by 600,000 people (Wikipedia, Stary Sącz).

Highlights

• A convent since 1280 - Poor Clares in continuous occupation, walled, with a museum.
• The tree-of-Jesse pulpit - carved as a tree in the baroque church interior.
• A cobbled market square - low arcaded houses, no through traffic.
• The 1999 papal altar - on the meadows below the town.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

What to expect

The convent is enclosed - only the church and museum are open, on limited hours. The square is genuinely small; this is an hour or two of sights plus atmosphere. Parking is awkward in season.

Nearby

Nowy Sacz and its open-air museum are ten kilometres north.

Key facts