The City
All the monuments worth seeing are concentrated around a relatively small central area, bisected by ul. Sienkiewicza, the main city street. North of Sienkiewicza is the pleasant main Rynek , lined with crumbling eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mansions, one of which (no. 3/5) houses a regional museum (Tues & Thurs-Sun 9am-4pm; 4zl), with a fairly forgettable collection of local archeological finds and ethnographic exhibits. More diverting are the occasional exhibitions of contemporary Polish art that visit the museum throughout the year, generally in summer. South of Sienkiewicza, on another square, pl. Zamkowy, you'll find the cathedral - Romanesque, lost in the later Baroque reconstruction - highlights of the murky interior being a fine Renaissance monument in red marble to a female member of the local Zebrzydowski family, sculpted by Il Padovano, a sumptuous early Baroque high altarpiece from the workshops of Krakow, and some elaborate Rococo decorative carvings in the choir stalls. During major religious festivals, the square east of the cathedral is packed with smartly dressed locals, many in regional folk costume, processing solemnly around the square. A short way west of the cathedral is the Palac Biskupow Krakowskich (Krakow Bishop's Palace), an impressive early Baroque complex, built on a closed axial plan mimicking the layout of a period north Italian villa supplemented, as in Wawel Castle, by features such as a sturdy-looking roof adjusted to the demands of a northern climate. Constructed in the late 1630s as a residence for the bishops of Krakow, under whose ecclesiastical jurisdiction the city and surroundings fell, up until the late eighteenth century, the palace now houses another regional museum (Wed-Sun 9am-4pm, plus May-June & Sept-Oct Tues 10am-6pm; 5zl), this time among the country's weightier ones. A mazey selection of ground-floor and upstairs rooms are taken up with an extensive collection of Polish art from the seventeenth century onwards. As often in such museums, the early works are effectively an extended portrait gallery of the Polish aristocracy, alongside the usual selection of patriotic favourites such as Kosciuszko and Prince Jozef Poniatowski. The nineteenth- and twentienth-century rooms contain a notable selection of Mloda Polska movement-era art, including works by Wyspianski, some typically distorted, dreamlike Witkiewicz compositions and a diverting group of self-portraits by Malczewski. On a military note, the museum's collection of swords and other weapons of war from across the centuries culminates in the Pilsudski sanctuary, established in the venerated prewar leader's honour, a few years after his death in 1935, and kept pretty much the same ever since. Most rooms of the upper floor comprise the former bishop's apartments, adorned with a sumptuous array of period furnishings, several of them still retaining their original decoration. The most notable feature here is the decorated high ceilings with intricately painted larch beams and elaborate friezes running around the tops of the walls. The finest example of this effect is in the Great Dining Hall , the frieze here consisting of a mammoth twin-level series of portraits of Krakow bishops and Polish monarchs. A number of apartments display some striking ceiling paintings from the workshop of Thomas Dolabella, notably the Senatorial Hall in the west wing, featuring the ominous Judgement of the Polish Brethren , with a grand, sweeping depiction of scenes from the Polish-Swedish and Polish-Muscovite wars of the seventeenth century in the adjoining room. Working your way round the back of the museum to the south brings you to ul. Zamkowa, and one of the more something sights of Kielce, the former prison at no. 3, now the site of a Museum Pamieci Narodowej (Museum of National Remembrance; Wed, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm; donation). Used by the Gestapo in World War II, and subsequently inherited by the communist security police, the prison was the site of innumerable torturings and murders between 1939 and 1956. The cells have been preserved in pretty much their original state - note the cages built over the windows to prevent notes or anything else from being passed outside to those prisoners lucky enough to be allowed some exercise in the yard. Further south still, ul. Kaczmarka leads south to the Rezerwat Geologiczny Kadzielnia (Kadzielnia Geological Reserve), a former limestone quarry now laid out as an (albeit scruffy) park. With bleak crags surrounded by scrub, it's a surprise to find such a seemingly wild landscape so close to a city centre. At the far end of the reserve is an open-air concert venue, the "amphitheatre", put to good use in summer when various cultural events take place here. While memories of the notorious Kielce Pogrom may have weighed heavily in wider postwar Polish-Jewish relations, the same could not be said in the city itself, where for many years there was no effective recognition of the event in the form of an official monument or commemoration. This has now been rectified - albeit at the instigation of a private Jewish foundation, rather than the city authorities. The house where the pogrom occurred, at no. 7/8 Planty, is a short walk west of the square on the edge of the canal that cuts across ul. Sienkiewicza. It displays a recently erected commemorative plaque in Polish, Hebrew and English "to the 42 Jews murdered ? during anti-Semitic riots" - a commendably honest description of an event of which some in Poland would prefer not to be reminded. Other sites of historic Jewish interest are the former synagogue on al. IX Wiekow Kielc, now an archive building, and the crumbling cemetery some way south of the centre in the Pakosz district (bus #4 passes fairly close by - get off on ul. Pakosz), where around a hundred gravestones are still standing, along with a dignified monument to local victims of the Holocaust.
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