Kazimierz Dolny

A Benedictine settlement called Wietrzna Góra stood on one of the local hills in the 11th century; in 1181 Prince Casimir II the Just gave it to Norbertine nuns from Kraków, who renamed it Kazimierz after him, and "Dolny" (Lower) was added later to tell it apart from Kazimierz near Kraków. King Casimir III the Great granted town rights in the first half of the 14th century, and Władysław II Jagiełło laid out its market square and streets.

The town's golden age came in the 16th and early 17th centuries with the Vistula grain trade. Under the Firlej family, who held it from 1501 to 1644, merchants built granaries and houses in local limestone after the fires of 1561 and 1585, and grain was shipped downriver to Gdańsk. Swedish troops burned and ransacked the town in February 1656. John III Sobieski invited Armenian, Greek and Jewish merchants to settle in 1677, but the river trade had come to an end, and after the partitions cut it off from Gdańsk the town sank into obscurity — which preserved its Renaissance plan and buildings.

From the late 19th century wealthy people from Lublin and Warsaw built villas in the gorges, and painters made it an art colony; it regained town status in 1927. Jews had lived here since the 14th century, and as Kuzmir the town gave its name to a Hasidic dynasty founded by Yehezkel Taub. On the eve of the war some 1,800 Jews lived here; the Germans set up a ghetto in 1940, and in 1942 its inmates were sent to their deaths, with fewer than twenty surviving. Partly destroyed in the war and rebuilt, the town was declared a national Historic Monument in 1994.

Kazimierz Dolny is above all an art town. Painters have come here since the 19th century to paint the square, the river and the hills and to sell their work, and galleries in almost every street offer paintings, sculpture, stained glass and folk art. The painter and sculptor Chaim Goldberg, one of its best-known Jewish residents, made depicting the town of the 1930s his life's mission and went on painting it from memory.

Its picturesque streets have long attracted film-makers: scenes for the Yiddish films Yiddle With His Fiddle of 1936 and The Dybbuk of 1937 were shot here, and several films since. The Two Riversides Film and Art Festival brings cinema to the town every August. Music has its own calendar: the Festival of Folk Bands and Singers, held since 1966, an organ festival in the parish church, a klezmer festival, the multi-genre Kazimiernikejszyn since 2014 and, since 2013, the Pardes Festival of Jewish culture.

The town is a favourite weekend escape for people from Warsaw and Lublin, part of a "tourist triangle" with Puławy and the spa town of Nałęczów. Local life follows the seasons: busy and festive in summer, quiet in winter, with the market and the parish church at the centre of the week.

Kazimierz Dolny had about 2,500 inhabitants at the end of 2019, a small community that swells many times over with visitors on summer weekends and festival days. Tourism is the town's economy: galleries, guesthouses, restaurants, bars and craft stalls, with summer homes in the surrounding hills.

The town is protected as a whole: its centre is a national Historic Monument, and the surrounding hills and gorges, where villas and guesthouses still stand among the trees, form the Kazimierz Landscape Park, established in 1979 and judged to have an unstable natural balance. There is no railway, so residents depend on minibuses and cars, and on nearby Puławy for rail connections and nightlife.

Life centres on the Market Square, with its morning market on Sundays and some weekdays and its bars where national football matches are shown. In 2024 an international travel magazine named the town among Europe's most beautiful small towns.

Kazimierz Dolny has no single dish of its own, but its kitchens draw on the cooking of the Lublin region. Cebularz, the round wheat-dough pancake topped with diced onion and poppy seeds that is characteristic of Lublin cuisine and was first baked by Jewish bakers, is the regional snack, and pierogi are widely served.

The town's Jewish past is remembered above all in music, at the klezmer festival and the Pardes Festival of Jewish culture. Restaurants range from simple places to expensive ones, mostly on the Market Square and the streets leading down to the river, and bar prices are much the same across the town.

The morning market on the square sells handmade baskets and trinkets, and Nałęczów nearby bottles mineral water. Drinks from the regional capital are on hand too: Żołądkowa Gorzka, a herbal vodka in the tradition of the infused nalewka made by the Lublin distillery, and the Perła brewery's pilsner-type lager.