Ciężkowice is a town in

Tarnów County __NOTOC__ Tarnów County ( pl, powiat tarnowski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, southern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government ...

Lesser Poland Voivodeship Lesser Poland Voivodeship or Lesser Poland Province (in pl, województwo małopolskie ), also known as Małopolska, is a voivodeship (province), in southern Poland. It has an area of , and a population of 3,404,863 (2019). It was created on 1 ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, with 2,444 inhabitants as of December 2021. It lies in the ''Ciężkowice Foothills'', on the Biała river. The town is located on regional road nr. 977, it also has a rail station (Bogoniowice - Ciężkowice), on a line which goes from

Tarnów Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarn� ...

to the Slovak border crossing at Leluchów. Ciężkowice is home to a sports club ''Ciężkowianka'', founded in 1948.

History

The history of Ciężkowice dates back to the year 1125, when in a document of

Papal legate 300px, A woodcut showing Henry II of England greeting the pope's legate. A papal legate or apostolic legate (from the ancient Roman title '' legatus'') is a personal representative of the pope to foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic ...

Gilles de Paris, the village is mentioned as a property of the

Tyniec Tyniec is a historic village in Poland on the Vistula river, since 1973 a part of the city of Kraków (currently in the district of Dębniki). Tyniec is notable for its Benedictine abbey founded by King Casimir the Restorer in 1044. Etymology ...

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

Abbey. On February 29, 1348, King

Kazimierz Wielki Casimir III the Great ( pl, Kazimierz III Wielki; 30 April 1310 – 5 November 1370) reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, and fought to retain the title in the Galicia-Volhynia Wars. He ...

granted it

Magdeburg rights Magdeburg rights (german: Magdeburger Recht; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within ...

town charter. At that time, Ciężkowice was partly inhabited by the German settlers. In the late

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, Ciężkowice was located on a merchant route from the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coronation of the Hungarian monarch, c ...

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...

. Weekly fairs took place here every Wednesday, where local dairy products, clothes, salt, horses and Hungarian wines were sold. In 1358, St. Andrew parish church was built. After the

Swedish invasion of Poland The Deluge ( pl, potop szwedzki, lt, švedų tvanas) was a series of mid-17th-century military campaigns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a wider sense it applies to the period between the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 and the Truce ...

, Ciężkowice lost its importance. Until 1772 (see

Partitions of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 12 ...

), the town belonged to

Sandomierz Voivodeship Sandomierz Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo Sandomierskie, la, Palatinatus Sandomirensis) was a unit of administration and local government in Poland from the 14th century to the partitions of Poland in 1772–1795. It was part of the Lesser Polan ...

. From 1772 to late 1918, it was part of Austrian

Galicia Galicia may refer to: Geographic regions * Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain ** Gallaecia, a Roman province ** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia ** The medieval King ...

. The decline of Ciężkowice was so severe that in 1934, the government of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

stripped it of the town charter, and Ciężkowice remained a village until 1998.

Points of interest

* Nature Museum of Krystyna and Wlodzimierz Tomek, with a collection of birds and insects, * neo-Gothic St. Andrew church, with an Ecce Homo painting, presented to the town by

Pope Innocent XI Pope Innocent XI ( la, Innocentius XI; it, Innocenzo XI; 16 May 1611 – 12 August 1689), born Benedetto Odescalchi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 21 September 1676 to his death on August 12, 1689. Poli ...

, *

Classicist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Cla ...

town hall in the market square, * wooden houses in the market square, typical of the Carpathian Foothills, * St. Florian monument (patron saint of the town), in the market square, * several roadside chapels, *

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

military cemeteries nr. 137, 138,139 and 140, *

Ignacy Jan Paderewski Ignacy Jan Paderewski (; – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versaill ...

manor house with a spacious park, located on the other side of the Biala river, in the village of Kąśna Dolna. The manor house was built in the early 19th century, and in 1897, it was remodelled by its new owner, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who in 1903 sold it to Helena and Wlodzimierz Kodrębski. Currently, it houses the Paderewski Center.

Stone Town Nature Reserve

''Stone Town Nature Reserve'' (known in Polish as ''Rezerwat przyrody Skamieniałe Miasto'') is located on the right bank of the Biała river, near Ciężkowice. It has the area of 15

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre i ...

s, and it was created in 1931, with official recognition in 1974. The reserve spreads from the Biała valley to the peak of the Skała hill (367 meters above sea level). Among oak and pine forest there are several large

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...

rocks, shaped during the process of

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is d ...

. Altogether, they make the so-called stone town, and names of individual rocks are based on their appearance (“Pyramid”, “Witch”, “Town Hall”, “Club”). There also is a small waterfall nearby.

Gallery

File:Ciężkowice, kościół św. Andrzeja Apostoła (HB1).jpg, St. Andrew the Apostle Church File:Ciężkowice, ratusz (HB1).jpg, Town hall File:Ciężkowice, układ urbanistyczny (HB1).jpg, Market square File:Ciężkowice, rynek, ul. św. Andrzeja (HB1).jpg, Historic building in the town centre File:Ciężkowice, rynek, pomnik Paderewskiego (HB1).jpg,

monument File:Ciężkowice, cmentarz wojenny nr 137 (HB2).jpg, Military cemetery File:Ciezkowice-skamieniale-miasto.JPG, Stone Town Nature Reserve File:Ciezkowice-skamieniale-miasto-2.JPG, Nature Reserve File:Ciężkowice, Poland - panoramio (36).jpg, Rock formations

References

External links

Stone Town at Ciężkowice portal, with photos of rocks

Jewish Community in Ciężkowice
on Virtual Shtetl
English guide to Ciężkowice
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ciezkowice Cities and towns in Lesser Poland Voivodeship Tarnów County Kraków Voivodeship (14th century – 1795) Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Kraków Voivodeship (1919–1939)