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, through partitions, wars and the communist period, 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.

What you actually see

• 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.

Honest expectations

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.