Wroclaw
WROCLAW - MEETING POINT
Wroclaw is the capital of Lower Silesia and it is one of Poland’s oldest and most beautiful cities. It is located at the foothills of the Sudetes, on the Oder River. The river cuts the town with its tributaries and canals, flowing around 12 islands and under 112 bridges of the city. There are parks, gardens and architectural monuments. If we look farther, Wroclaw is near the place
where three countries, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, meet, thus it is the international Meeting Place for people of culture and business. Wroclaw is an excellent example of a multicultural metropolis situated at the interface of ethnically diverse areas.
More about Wroclaw
Wroclaw is an excellent
example of a multicultural metropolis situated at the interface of ethnically diverse areas. For a greater part of the city's history, German was the dominant language in Wroclaw. However, for several generations the city was home to the Korn publishing house, which printed many books in Polish (250 titles between 1732 and 1790). Here the German playwright Karl Holtei staged a play about the
Polish national hero Tadeusz Kosciusko in 1826. The Czechs have also played an important role in the city's history (in 1335- 1526 Wroclaw belonged to the Kingdom of Bohemia). As late as 1719, the great sculptor Johann Georg Urbanski of Bohemia was given the key to the city.
Multiculturalism again left a very deep impression on the city's character after the Second World War, when the city's German population was largely replaced by people arriving from
various regions of Poland, including those resettled from the eastern provinces of Poland taken over by the Soviet Union. In particular, many former citizens of Wilno (Vilnius) and Lwów (Lvov) settled here. With them came the great library collection of the Ossolinski Institution from Lwów (Lvov), which found a new
location in the magnificent Baroque edifice of the former monastery of the Red Star Knights of the Cross. Two other works of unique significance for Polish culture were transferred from Lwów (Lvov): the statue of the leading Polish comic dramatist, Count Aleksander Fredro, and the Panorama of the Battle of Raclawice, a monumental painting representing the victorious battle with the
Russian forces fought by Tadeus Kosciusko on 4 April 1794, one of only several paintings of this kind to have survived in Europe until the present. Very interesting places to visit:
Panorama of the Battle of Raclawice in Wroclaw, an impressive relic of 19th – century mass culture, is one of only few examples of this genre preserved in Europe. The large painting (15 x 114 m) “transfers” the viewer into an altogether different time, a
reality of its own, by artfully combining painterly devices (special kind of perspective) and technical effects (lighting, artificial terrain, dark and usually tortuous passage to the viewing platform). Panorama of the Battle of Raclawice is the oldest and only extant example of panorama painting in Poland.
Ostrów Tumski
("Cathedral Island ), in Wroclaw, Poland, is the oldest part of Wroclaw. Built on what used to be an island ("ostrów", in old Polish), it was an early crossing point on the Oder River. Archaeological excavations have shown that the area was first inhabited on the west, between the Church of St.Martin and the Holy Cross. The first, wooden church (St. Martin), dating from
the IX century, was surrounded by a couple of defensive walls before the river. There were approximately 1500 inhabitants in Ostrów Tumski at that time. The first constructions on Ostrów Tumski were built in the X century by the Piast dynasty, and were made from wood. The first building from solid material was St.Martin's chapel, built probably at the beginning of the eleventh century by
Benedict monks. Not long after the first cathedral was raised, in the place of a small church. In 1163 the settlement was raided by Boleslaw I the Tall when he returned after being banished. After taking control of the area and waiting for the political situation in Silesia to stabilize, he chose Ostrów Tumski as his new seat. He soon started to replace the wooden defenses with bricked ones
and to build a roman-style residence. In 1315 Ostrów Tumski was sold to the church authorities. The whole island ceased to be under secular jurisdiction, which was often used by those who broke the law in Wroclaw. An interesting indication of the special status of the island was a ban to wear anything on the head already on Tumski Bridge after the border pole of this small "Church nation" (the law also affected royal members).