Every design for Jarosław

Tradition credits Yaroslav the Wise, prince of Kievan Rus', with founding Jarosław on the San, and the town still carries his name, even though the first written record of it comes more than a century later. It received Magdeburg rights from Duke Vladislaus II of Opole and grew into a river port and trading town on the routes linking Silesia with Ruthenia, Gdańsk and Hungary.

What sets Jarosław apart is its fair. For three weeks around the feast of the Assumption, merchants arrived from as far as Spain, England, Finland, Armenia and Persia, and the wealth they left behind still shows in a preserved old town of Renaissance and Baroque buildings. Muzeum Kamienica Orsettich keeps that mercantile story, Klasztor sióstr benedyktynek stands on the hill where the first town was laid out, and Cerkiew konkatedralna Przemienienia Pańskiego speaks for the Greek Catholic community that has long been part of the place. The Jesuit college founded here was known as far away as Hungary and Wallachia, with its own theatre and one of the largest libraries in Poland.

Walk through Brama Główna and the old trading town opens up in front of you – a gateway worth carrying with you, wherever you happen to live now.