Plock is the oldest city in the Mazovia region, and one of the oldest in Poland. One thousand years old, it fascinates the tourists with its historic monuments and picturesque location on a tall escarpment on the Vistula river.
At the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, Plock was the residence of the duke Władysław Herman and his son Boleslaw the Wrymouth, and thus the actual capital of Poland. Most relics of this glorious past are to be found on the Cathedral Hill (Wzgórze Tumskie), which also has a panoramic view of the Vistula. At night, the historic sites are beautifully illuminated.
Many of Plock’s 140 architectural monuments may be designated as ‘oldest’ ones. For instance, its cathedral, built between 1130 and 1144, is one of the oldest religious buildings in Poland. It is also the burial place of two dukes of Poland – Władysław Herman and Boleslaw the Wrymouth. The main entrance presents a fascinating copy of the famous bronze-made Plock Doors of the 12th century (the original is available at the St. Sophia Cathedral in Veliky Novgorod, Russia).
- The Mazovian Museum (Muzeum Mazowieckie) (1821), with the country’s largest art nouveau collection,
- and the Diocesan Museum (Muzeum Diecezjalne) (1903), with its collections of manuscripts and documents (12th-16th centuries), noblemen’s sashes and liturgical vestments, also rank among the country’s oldest.
- The Zielinski Library (Biblioteka im. Zielińskich), run by the (country’s oldest) Plock Scientific Society, stores a collection of 80 prints by Francisco Goya, the first edition of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium of 1543, and Dante’s Divine Comedy of 1487.
- Plock has also the oldest school in Poland. It is the famous ‘Malachowianka’, Stanisław Małachowski High School, with a history of eight hundred years.
Very impressive is also Plock’s two-storey town hall (1827) at the Old Square Market (Stary Rynek), which was the venue of the last session of the Congress Poland’s Legislative Assembly in 1831 (before it was abolished by the Russian Tsar). Every day at 12 o’clock, a bugle call is sounded from the town hall’s tower, and then Boleslaw the Wrymouth’s knighting scene is staged by life-sized figures.
After sightseeing or taking a walk down the promenade on the Vistula, it is nice to take some rest in an open-air café at the market square, and to muse on the city’s old splendour, to contemplate the old houses and the illuminated Aphrodite Fountain.
www.ump.pl /English, Deutsch/
www.itplock.pl /index.php /English/
www.milosierdzie.plock.eu /English, Deutsch, Francais, Espanol/
