Suprasl

Suprasl grew around an Orthodox monastery founded about 1500 by the Chodkiewicz family, whose church was built in a rare form - a fortified Orthodox church with corner towers, in a Gothic-Byzantine hybrid found in only a handful of places - and covered inside with sixteenth-century Serbian-influenced frescoes. The church was blown up in 1944; it has been rebuilt since 1984 and some fresco fragments recovered. The monastery is again in use. The Museum of Icons in the former archimandrite's palace is the important thing here: the largest icon collection in Poland, several hundred pieces, many of them recovered from smuggling seizures at the eastern border, displayed in a deliberately dim, atmospheric arrangement with sound. In the nineteenth century Suprasl was a textile town - German and Jewish manufacturers built mills and villas, several of which survive - and it later became a health resort in the forest.

History

The settlement grew up in the 16th century around the monastery, which kept a rich library of Polish, Latin, French and Ruthenian books; a printing house followed in 1695 and a paper mill in 1711, and King Augustus II stopped here in 1730. After 1831 the textile industry grew, the manufacturer Wilhelm Fryderyk Zachert came from Zgierz in 1834, and until the mid-19th century Supraśl was the largest textile centre in the region; it was recognised as a spa town in 2001 (Wikipedia, Supraśl).

What you'll find

• A fortified Orthodox church - rebuilt after 1944, in a rare defensive form.
• The Museum of Icons - the largest collection in Poland, many pieces seized at the border.
• Textile villas - nineteenth-century manufacturers' houses through the town.
• Forest on all sides - the Knyszyn forest starting at the edge of town.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

What to expect

The church is a reconstruction - the original frescoes survive only as fragments. The icon museum is deliberately dark, which some find hard. Closed Mondays. The town is small and quiet.

Nearby

The Knyszyn forest is around it; Bialystok is south-west.

Key facts