Worth Seeing
The 14-15th century St. Bartholomew Church, together with its renaissance chapel, is one of the oldest buildings in Konin.
The unique stone post near the church graveyard is one of Konin’s best known landmarks. It is acknowledged as Poland’s oldest road sign and has an inscription from 1151.
Not far away, the classicist town hall is at the intersection of ul. 3 Maja and ul. Wiosna Ludów. Its construction beyond the boundaries of the marketplace at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries presaged those changes to the original city layout that were to give it its present 19th-century aspect.
The oldest townhouse, known as Jan Zemełka’s House is on the southern boundary of the old marketplace and its framework dates back to the 16th century.
West of the marketplace, on the corner of ul. Zofii Urbanowskiej (Zofia Urbanowska St) and Obrońców Westerplatte, stands the Konin manor house of novelist Zofia Urbanowska (1849-1939), built c. 1864.
A former house of prayer and Talmudic studies stands beside the Konin synagogue at pl. Zamkowy (Castle Sq.).
The city park, established in 1832, is a few hundred metres further west. Behind the park is a plaque indicating the place of the former Jewish cemetery where, on 10 November 1939, at least 56 Poles were shot in a mass execution before the cemetery was destroyed.
Konin’s oldest suburb, originally called Garncarski (Pottery) or Święty Duch (Holy Spirit) spreads out south of the medieval marketplace at the bottom and on the slope of a glacial valley. Nowadays the site is occupied by the Evangelical-Augsburg church. First erected in 1856, it was thoroughly rebuilt in a neo-Gothic style in 1900-1915.
The baroque St. Mary Magdalene Church and a Franciscan monastery from the 1st half of the 18th century are nearby.
The oldest maintained cemeteries – Catholic and Evangelical-Augsburg – can be found in ul. Kolska.
The former barracks, built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries for a Russian dragoon regiment stationed in the city, are in ul. Kaliska.
For more information, go to:
www.konin.pl/en
