Day Trips From Warsaw – Unveiling Central and Eastern Europe’s Hidden Gems

Pultusk - Day Trips From Warsaw

The flat plains of Mazovia surround Warsaw, varied by extensive forests and the river Vistula. This is the only European river which still follows its natural, unregulated course. There are several historic towns and attractions which offer a day trip from Warsaw.

These include the ruined medieval castle in Czersk, set in a beautiful park and Zelazowa Wola.  It’s the manor house where the famous composer Frederic Chopin was born. More day trips from Warsaw ? Continue reading.

nieborow_palace
Nieborow Palace

Designed in a Baroque style by Tylman van Gameren, building of Nieborow took 9 years (1690 – 1696). It’s set in a symmetrical garden. The archbishop of Gniezno, Michal Radziejowski commissioned the palace, who was a generous patron of the arts.

Around 1766 Prince Michal Oginski decorated the pediment in a Rococo style. It featured a dancing figure of Bacchus, crowned with a laurel wreath and holding a bunch of grapes.

Oginski is famous for establishing the canal system which connected the Black Sea with the Baltic Sea via a network of rivers.

Between 1771 and 1945 Nieborow belonged to the aristocratic Radziwill family. Their magnificent furnishings and collection of art show throughout the palace. The collection includes Antoine Pesne’s portrait of Anna Orzelska, the daughter of August II Mocny, renowned for her beauty.

 

Natolin Palace And Wilanów Palace – Day Trips From Warsaw

Palac w Natolinie

Natolin Palace Warsaw
Natolin Palace Warsaw

When building the Neo-Classical Natolin Palace, was several kilometers outside Warsaw’s southern boundary. But today, urban housing estates encroach on the palace surroundings.

Prince August Czartoryski and his daughter Izabela Lubomirska, who owned the neighboring palace and estate of Wilanow recommended Natolin’s architect, Szymon Bogumil Zug, to its owners.

Natolin Palace has several notable features, including ornate wall and ceiling paintings. In 1808 Chrystian Piotr Aigner modified the palace. He added the dome and an unusual summer drawing room, which opens into the garden.

The palace is set in a landscaped park, which extends along an escarpment. The park has many buildings and decorative features, among them a bridge, a Doric temple, an aqueduct, and a Moorish gateway.

Wilanów Palace

Warsaw’s top palace, 10km south of the city center, was commissioned by King Jan III Sobieski in 1677. It has changed hands several times over the centuries, with each new owner adding a bit of baroque here and a touch of neoclassical there.

Restoration of the palace’s 2nd floor is underway until 2020, but in the meantime, you can tour the magnificent ground-floor rooms packed with artistic baubles and treasures. The last entry to the palace is an hour before closing.

Address: ul Potockiego 10/16. Wilanów

Pultusk – Day Trips From Warsaw

Pultusk Castle Poland
Pultusk Castle Poland

Pultusk (Pułtusk) its setting on the River Narew is one of the loveliest in Mazovia. Its Old Town occupies a large island and features an ornate town hall with a brick tower, and one of the largest market squares in Europe. At the northern end of the market square is the Gothic-Renaissance Collegiate Church of the Virgin Mary. The main nave’s arched vaulting is the work of one of Venice’s greatest architects, Giovanni Battista.

The Castle

On the opposite side of the market square is the castle. First Gothic, the castle was then destroyed and rebuilt several times. Following its reconstruction during the 1980s, the castle is now home to the Polish Expatriates House (Dom Polonii). The house is used by Polish émigrés but is open to everyone. It provides elegant rooms for overnight accommodation. One of the best day trips from Warsaw.

Plock – Day Trips From Warsaw

Plock Poland
Plock Poland

The focal point of Plock (Płock) is its cathedral hill, where most of the historic sites are located. Plock has been the seat of the Mozavian bishops since 1075, and for a few hundred years after 1138, it was also the house of the Mazovian and Plock princes.

The city’s principal attraction is the Mazovian Museum (Muzeum Mazowieckie). It has the finest collection of Secessionist artifacts in Poland.

These include several rooms furnished exactly as they would have looked during the Secessionist era. Giovanni Cini and Bernardino Zanobi de Gianotis built the Renaissance cathedral in the 16th century, on the site of an earlier Romanesque church.

The cathedral was later refurbished by the Venetian architect Giovanni Battista. The interiors contain several Renaissance and Baroque tombs. Close to the cathedral is the Diocesan Museum of Plock (Muzeum Diecezjalne), which has a range of religious exhibits.

Czersk – Day Trips From Warsaw

czersk-poland
Czersk – Day Trips From Warsaw

The village of Czersk was the capital of the Mazovian region. In 1413 Warsaw succeeded Czersk as the Mazovian capital, when the route of the River Vistula turned away from Czersk.

The village includes the ruins of the medieval castle of the Mazovian dukes, reached via a Gothic bridge spanning a moat. The ruins still standing date from the 14th-16th centuries, including three towers enlarged in the 16th century.

In the 13th century, Prince Konrad Mazowiecki, who brought the Teutonic Knights to Poland in 1226, imprisoned the infant Prince Boleslaw Wstydliwy (future Prince of Krakow) and Prince Henryk Brodaty, the Prince of Wroclaw, in the south tower.

Zelazowa Wola

Żelazowej Woli

Zelazowa Wola Poland
Zelazowa Wola Poland

Poland’s most renowned composer, Frederic Chopin, was born in this manor house on 1 March 1810. At that time the house was a thatched cottage, occupied by Chopin’s parents, Mikolaj and Justyna. The house opened as a museum in 1931, administrated by the Chopin Society in Warsaw. The society rebuilt the house, furnishing it in the original 19th-century way.

They assembled a collection of memorabilia associated with the composer to form the museum’s exhibits. The surrounding park has a range of trees and shrubs, donated by various Polish regions.

During World War II the Nazis looted many artifacts. They also banned performances of Chopin’s music, and even destroyed portraits of the composer. Following refurbishment, the house reopened to the public in 1949, on the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Lowicz Day Trip form Warsaw

Former Dominican Church in Lowicz Poland
Former Dominican Church in Lowicz Poland

The small town of Lowicz dates from the 13th century, and was the center of the oldest Polish counties. For several centuries Lowicz was the place of the archbishops of Gniezno, who were also the primates of Poland. Their legacy comprises several ecclesiastical buildings. The most outstanding among these is the medieval Collegiate Church, reconstructed in the 17th century.

The church has magnificent works of art and tombs. A notable tomb is that of Jakub Uchanski, the primate of Poland who died in 1581. It is in a chapel rebuilt in 1782-1783 in an early Neo-Classical style. It is worth visiting Lowicz on the feast of Corpus Christi (which is in either late May or early June) to see the ceremonial procession in which many of the women wear traditional folk costume.

By the market square is a series of buildings, including a former monastery and the Seminary for Missionaries, which houses the Lowicz Regional Museum. The museum has a folk art collection, and in its vaults of the former chapel is a collection of Baroque art and murals by Michelangelo Palloni. Lowicz is 50 miles (81 km) west of Warsaw.

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