Ciężkowice is a town in

Tarnów County __NOTOC__ Tarnów County () 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 reforms passed in 199 ...

Lesser Poland Voivodeship Lesser Poland Voivodeship ( ) is a voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship in southern Poland. It has an area of , and a population of 3,404,863 (2019). Its capital and largest city is Kraków. The province's name recalls the traditional name of a h ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, 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. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east– ...

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, to some other part of the Catho ...

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 The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

Abbey. On February 29, 1348, King

Kazimierz Wielki Casimir III the Great (; 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, retaining the title throughout the Galicia–Volhynia Wars. He was the last Polish king fr ...

granted it

Magdeburg rights Magdeburg rights (, , ; 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 cities and villages gr ...

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 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, 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 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

. 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 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 of Andrusovo in 1667, comprising the Pol ...

, Ciężkowice lost its importance. Until 1772 (see

Partitions of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partition (politics), partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place between 1772 and 1795, toward the end of the 18th century. They ended the existence of the state, resulting in the eli ...

), the town belonged to

Sandomierz Voivodeship Sandomierz Voivodeship (, ) 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 Poland region and the Lesser Poland Province. Originally Sandomier ...

. From 1772 to late 1918, it was part of Austrian Galicia. 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 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

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 ''Ecce homo'' (, , ; "behold the man") are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John, when he presents a scourged Jesus, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his crucif ...

painting, presented to the town by

Pope Innocent XI Pope Innocent 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 until his death on 12 August 1689. Political and religious tensions with ...

, *

Classicist Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

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 or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

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

Ignacy Jan Paderewski Ignacy Jan Paderewski (;

r 1859 R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars''. The lette ...

– 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist, composer and statesman who was a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the nation's Prime Minister of Poland, prime minister and foreign minister durin ...

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), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...

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 rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

rocks, shaped during the process of

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust and then sediment transport, tran ...

. 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,

Ignacy Jan Paderewski Ignacy Jan Paderewski (;

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
{{Authority control Cities and towns in Lesser Poland Voivodeship Tarnów County