Lublin & the Lublin Region
Descriptions of the most popular tours of Lublin and the Lublin Region
These are the basic tours that we do for Lublin, Majdanek, Kazimierz Dolny,
Kozłówka, Zamość, Włodawa, Sobibór and Bełżec. For each tour, we have tried to
present all major places of interest. However, we can tailor the itineraries
according to your interests and the time available; you may want to do a shorter
or longer tour, or combine elements of various tours.
What is more, the following list is by no means complete.
As the Explore Lublin website expands, we shall be adding descriptions
of other tours that include:
- the Roztocze region (with such places as Szczebrzeszyn, Zwierzyniec, or Krasnobród)
- the Podlasie region (Russian Orthodox churches, nature reserves, the Janów Podlaski stud famous all over the world for its Arabian horses)
- beauty spots west of Lublin such as the magnificent castle ruins in Janowiec on the Vistula river, and the tranquil Nałęczów spa (famous for its mineral water springs)
- the fabulous open-air museum of village architecture in Lublin (actually, the name "museum" is quite misleading because the place is alive: live animals, weekend presentations of traditional crafts, traditional celebrations of Polish holidays, etc.
Tour 1: A stroll around the Old Town and city centre
Highlights:
We begin with a stroll along the bustling shopping precinct named the Cracow Suburb,
with its pavement cafés and street musicians. Next, by way of contrast,
you can enjoy the quiet of the Cathedral, famous for the miraculous image of the Weeping
Mother of God. A climb up the nearby tower will reward you with a breathtaking panoramic
view of the city. Then you enter the medieval Old Town with its twisting lanes
and ancient houses full of legends. And when you walk through the door of the
Dominican church, you slip back several centuries...You will notice that the Old Town
is also a vibrant place, with numerous art galleries, pubs and restaurants.
The crowning point of the tour is the Gothic-style Castle Chapel with fabulous Byzantine frescoes, the work
of early 15th-century Ruthenian painters.
Duration: 3-4 hours
Click here to find out more about the tour programme.
Tour 2: Traces of the Polish Jerusalem - the Jewish heritage tour
Introduction: The tour is very much a search for the lost world.
The yeshivas set up by Szalom Szachna and Salomon Luria (Maharshal),
the printing house run by the Schwarzes, or sessions of the autonomous Jewish
Parliament are only some of the reasons why the Jewish community gained fame
and importance in the 16th and first half of the 17th c. In the 19th c.
Lublin became one of the main centres of the Chassidic movement, thanks to
its charismatic leader, Ha Choze (the Seer). The renowned Academy
of the Sages established by Meir Shapiro in 1930 was the swan song of Lublinian
Jews who represented one third of the city's population before the outbreak
of WW2. The diabolic and murderous Nazi occupation wiped out practically the
entire community and turned the Lublin Region into one of the main killing
grounds in Nazi-occupied Europe. Most of the few survivors could not go on
living here after the war and emigrated to Israel, the USA or other countries.
Today you can count the Jews in Lublin on the fingers of your hands.
After the fall of communism, we have regained the freedom to rediscover
the Jewish heritage and preserve the memory of the Polish Jerusalem for
the future generations.
Highlights: The tour takesin all the most important remnants of the
Jewish community in Lublin: the Old Cemetery (with graves of Maharshal,
Ha Choze mi Lublin) and the New Cemetery (with the ohel of Meir Shapira),
the Academy of the Sages of Lublin, the last surviving synagogue in Lublin,
the Jewish Old Town, the building of the Jewish theatre and the
exhibition at the Grodzka Gate Centre: the sights and sounds of the Jewish Quarter. We finish in
the square under the Castle where you will here about Lublin's Broadway
and see the site of the Great Synagogue (no longer existing)
Duration: 2-3 hours
Click here to find out more about the tour programme.
Tour 3: Mankind's darkest hour: Majdanek & other places of Nazi terror
Itinerary: You visit the State Museum at
the former Nazi concentration camp Majdanek, the second
largest camp in Nazi-occupied Europe (after Auschwitz-Birkenau)
where about 235 thousand people of over 50 nationalities
were murdered (mainly Jews, Poles and citizens of the Soviet Union).
During the second part of the tour, you go to the Lublin Castle
that served as a Gestapo and, after the war, a Communist prison.
Then you will see the former headquarters of Aktion Reinhard
(code name for the extermination of Polish Jewry) and other buildings
that housed various Nazi offices during the Second World War.
The tour ends in the Wieniawa Quarter, a Polish-Jewish suburb prior to WW,
almost totally destroyed by the Nazis.
Duration: 3-5 hours.
The minimum time required for
a tour of Majdanek is 1.5 hour; a more thorough tour of
the camp will take up to 3 hours.
Comments: You may also combine a tour of Majdanek with
the Jewish heritage tour.
Click here to find out more about the tour programme.
Tour 4: The beauty of Zamość vs. the horror of Bełżec and Sobibór
Introduction: The first stop during the tour
is Włodawa, a town on the Polish- Belorussian border.
Until WW2, it was a town of three cultures: Catholics,
Russian Orthodox and Jews lived here side by side.
The synagogue complex, one of the most beautiful in Poland,
will show you the richness of Jewish life in this little town.
We go on to Sobibór, to see the site one of the Aktion Reinhard
death camps established by the Nazis in 1942 (the other camps
were Bełżec and Treblinka). Their purpose was the "final solution
of the Jewish question", i.e. the extermination of all European Jews.
At Sobibór you will see a small exhibition and hear the story of
the heroic revolt and escape of the prisoners in October 1943.
On the way to Bełżec, we stop in Zamość, a UNESCO World
Heritage site, often referred to as the "Pearl of Renaissance" or
"Padua of the North". On the one hand, you can admire the fabulous
market square with arcaded burghers' houses and the beautifully
decorated synagogue. On the other hand, you will see the Rotunda,
the notorious Nazi "transit camp".
The Jews, who represented 43% of the population of Zamość,
were confined to the ghetto and murdered
in the gas chambers of Bełżec and Sobibór, whereas the Polish
population of the Zamość region was subjected to large-scale brutal
expulsions aimed to provide Lebensraum for German settlers.
The tour ends with Bełżec, a small village where the Nazis
established the first of the Aktion Reinhard camps, a terrible
"death factory". You can visit the multimedia museum and see the
heart-rending memorial to the victims of Nazi genocide.
Duration: 9-10 hours (incl. about 5 hours of travel).
Click here to find out more about the tour programme.
Tour 5: Polish Lifestyles: Kozłówka, Kazimierz Dolny and Wojciechów
Highlights: The tour is called "Polish Lifestyles"
because it will show you how Poles of various social, religious and professional
backgrounds lived and worked over the centuries: aristocracy and townspeople,
Jews and Christians, merchants and monks, painters and blacksmiths. At the same time, it's gonna be great fun!
We begin with the magnificent country residence
of the Zamoyski family and socialist art gallery in Kozłówka.
We continue to Kazimierz Dolny, a lovely town on the Vistula river,
a paradise for painters, tourists, nature lovers, art aficionados, etc.,
and probably the trendiest place in the entire Lublin Region.
Let's strike while the iron is hot and see a real blacksmith
forge a real horseshoe in the village of Wojciechów. To cool off a bit, we shall
seek shelter in a sixteenth-century residential tower that has been turned
into a unique museum devoted to the art of blacksmithing.
Duration: 7-9 hours (incl. about 3 hours of travel).
Click here to find out more about the tour programme.