Krasnystaw: The Town I Had Crossed Twice Without Really Seeing

I had already been here

I had been through Krasnystaw twice before, both times on bicycle trips.

In May 2024 I photographed the Rynek, the market square, the Magistrat and the Church of St Francis Xavier. Two years later I passed through again and came home with more photographs of the centre, including a view of the town from open ground outside it.

If somebody had asked me then what I associated with Krasnystaw, my first answer might simply have been kefir.

The reason I finally returned properly had little to do with history. While preparing for an ultramarathon, I was looking for half-marathons that I could use as long training runs. I noticed the Półmaraton Chmielakowy in Krasnystaw and thought it would also be a good opportunity to actually stop in the town and learn more about it.

The race route passed several places I’d already been researching, so I would have a chance to look for some of them along the way.

So on Friday afternoon we drove to Krasnystaw. This time I had a reason to stop.

Chmielaki in the Rynek

After collecting the race pack we went into the centre.

There was already a small crowd in the Rynek because the official opening of Chmielaki was taking place. The festival started in Krasnystaw in 1971, and its organisers now describe it as Poland’s oldest beer festival.

This was a different version of the square from the one I had photographed earlier. A stage and festival infrastructure occupied part of it, and the Magistrat was difficult to photograph properly from some angles.

One thing I was deliberately looking for was the strange bent tree in the square.

I had actually photographed it during my previous visit without knowing there was a story behind it. It is a boxelder maple known locally as the Klęczące Drzewo, or Kneeling Tree. It was saved after plans to remove it met opposition from residents and environmental campaigners, and in 2018 it became Poland’s Tree of the Year.

The Jesuit complex I had already photographed

From the Rynek we went towards the Church of St Francis Xavier.

This was another building I had already photographed during the 2024 bicycle trip. This time I knew that I was looking at part of a substantial former Jesuit complex.

The complex was built in stages around the turn of the 18th century to a design by the Jesuit architect Jan Delamars. Its interior includes painted decoration by the Franciscan Adam Swach. After the Jesuit order was suppressed, the church later served for a period as the cathedral of the Chełm diocese.

We managed to go inside, although a Mass was taking place, so I only took a quick photograph and didn’t spend long looking around.

The garden I didn’t expect

The next discovery wasn’t really part of my plan.

Monika knew there was a Biblical Garden beside the church. She had wanted to see it on an earlier visit to Krasnystaw, but it had been closed then. This time the gate was open.

I wasn’t particularly convinced by the idea before we went in, but the garden surprised me.

What caught my attention most was the Chinese section. Pagoda-like structures weren’t what I expected to find in a Biblical Garden in eastern Poland.

There was a reason for them. Part of the garden is dedicated to St Francis Xavier, patron of the nearby parish and one of the best-known Jesuit missionaries. The Chinese garden was created as a tribute to him. Xavier spent years working in Asia and hoped to enter China, but died in 1552 on an island off the Chinese coast before reaching the mainland.

The garden itself is modern and opened officially in 2012.

Why are there two Augustinian complexes?

Later on Friday our car was parked near the Church of the Holy Trinity. The church itself was easy enough to recognise, but I wouldn’t have understood the surrounding buildings as an Augustinian complex just by looking at them.

The following morning I visited the old Augustinian complex on Zamkowa Street.

Again, it wasn’t immediately obvious what everything had once been. There were clearly old buildings, but without the research I would have struggled to read the site.

The reason Krasnystaw has an old and a new Augustinian complex turned out to be more interesting than the architecture alone.

The old complex has medieval origins and stood beside the former castle. Its church and monastery were founded under Władysław Jagiełło and were repeatedly damaged and rebuilt over the following centuries.

In the 19th century Russian imperial authorities took over the old Augustinian property. The order received replacement buildings elsewhere in town. A new monastery was built around 1826, followed by the Church of the Holy Trinity in 1837-1839.

After the Augustinian monastery was suppressed in 1864, the new complex changed hands again, passing first to the Greek Catholic, or Uniate and later to the Orthodox Church. It returned to Catholic use in 1917.

That helped explain why these buildings had been difficult for me to understand just by walking past them. Their present appearance is only one stage in a much longer history of changing uses.

There was another missing piece beside the old complex: the castle.

Krasnystaw once had a royal castle, but there’s no castle to visit today. After a major fire in 1811, the castle and town walls were dismantled to provide material for rebuilding the town.

A town rebuilt again

The 1811 fire wasn’t the last time large parts of Krasnystaw had to be rebuilt.

The First World War caused enormous damage. Fighting between Russian and Central Powers forces affected Krasnystaw in 1914 and again in 1915. One contemporary account described roughly three quarters of the town as burned. Exact figures vary depending on what was counted, but the destruction was extensive. Archival figures compiled for Krasnystaw recorded 180 destroyed buildings in the town proper and 392 when the listed suburbs were included.

The Magistrat burned. Buildings around the Rynek were destroyed. St Francis Xavier church was damaged, and the synagogue also had to be rebuilt after the war.

So while Krasnystaw contains much older institutions and street patterns, the town visible today also contains a substantial layer of reconstruction.

The synagogue I would have walked past

One of my research targets was the former synagogue on Czysta Street.

I knew where it was and what I was looking for. Without that preparation, I don’t think I would have recognised it as a synagogue at all.

The present building at Czysta 3 dates from its reconstruction in 1928-1930 after the earlier synagogue was destroyed during the First World War. It was damaged and altered again after losing its religious function and later went through several secular uses.

Today there’s little about its exterior that would immediately tell a passer-by what it once was.

The former synagogue also points to a much larger story. Krasnystaw had a Jewish community before the Second World War. Under German occupation a ghetto was established in 1940. In 1942 Jews from Krasnystaw were deported, including via Izbica to Sobibór, while others were sent to Majdanek.

That wider history deserves more space than I can give it in an article about the whole town.

Once I started looking, other buildings stood out

Not everything I noticed had been on my research list.

Walking from Zamkowa towards Browarna, one very large old-looking building immediately stood out. I photographed it simply because it looked historic. It turned out to be the former county government building, dating from the first half of the 19th century and now used by the Powiatowy Urząd Pracy.

Another building that stood out was the substantial brick structure around PCK and Okrzei streets. I remembered reading afterwards that it had once been a gymnasium, but that was only part of its story.

The building at PCK 2 began as a casino for officers of the Russian garrison. During the fighting of 1914 and 1915 it became a military hospital. In 1917 the Austrian occupation authorities agreed to open a Polish Real Gymnasium there. During the German occupation the school was closed and the building became the garrison headquarters. After the war it returned to educational use.

That was a lot of history in a building I had photographed simply because it looked interesting.

Chmielaki was not just a festival name

After the run, the main place I wanted to visit was the Regional Museum.

By then Chmielaki had been difficult to miss. The Rynek had a stage, beer stands and festival activity, and the entire weekend was built around the event.

The museum put that into a much longer context.

The first Chmielaki in 1971 was closely connected with hop growing. The programme included a meeting of hop growers, a session about cultivation and an exhibition devoted to hops. At the time, Krasnystaw county was a major hop-producing area.

That connection isn’t just historical branding. Lubelskie remains the centre of Polish hop growing, with around 90% of the country’s hop plantations located in the region.

Brewing in Krasnystaw also predates Chmielaki by centuries. Historical material records brewing privileges from the 16th century, while an 1811 plan showed malt houses and breweries around Browarna Street.

I had initially thought of the weekend as a convenient coincidence: a half-marathon plus a beer festival. By the time I left the museum, the festival made much more sense as part of a local agricultural and brewing story.

And the kefir?

There was one final connection to my old mental image of Krasnystaw.

The half-marathon route passed beside OSM Krasnystaw, and the dairy was also one of the event partners.

I looked around while passing it but didn’t notice anything obviously old or historically interesting from the road.

That’s fine. Not every research lead has to become a story.

Looking at Krasnystaw again

The most useful part of the weekend was not collecting seventeen attractions from the official map.

Krasnystaw had not suddenly become a different town.

I had simply stopped crossing it and started looking.