Breathing life back into once-great spa
POLAND | Heirs rebuild idyllic retreat wiped out by World War II
SZCZAWNICA ZDROJ, Poland -- For more than 100 years, aristocrats and artists came to the mountain health resort of Szczawnica Zdroj in search of cures.
Jewish rabbis walked in the park, arguing theological points with their students and sipping water from the mineral springs. Visitors included Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz, one of the most celebrated Polish writers of all time.
But this idyllic retreat founded in 1820 was wiped out by World War II and subsequent decades of communism. The Soviet-backed Communists seized Szczawnica Zdroj from its owner, Count Adam Stadnicki, and made the resort available primarily to their own apparatchiks and workers. And in the declining years of Moscow's influence, this picturesque clear-air haven in southern Poland, cradled in a valley between the Beskidy and Pieniny mountains, fell into disrepair.
Now, in democratic Poland, Stadnicki's heirs have regained from the state most of the resort's installations and -- having pledged to invest some 10 million zlotys ($4.5 million) by 2009 -- are pushing ahead with intensive construction work to restore Szczawnica back to its prewar look and high-society charm. The spa remains open as renovations continue.
"Our family was here for almost 40 years and my grandfather has asked his inheritors to return here one day," said Krzysztof Mankowski, 30, a great-grandson of Count Stadnicki. "This is our heart, these are our family roots."
A Paris-born expert in construction, Mankowski represents more than 20 descendants of Count Stadnicki scattered from Belgium to South Africa, and is spearheading the renovation of the Swiss-style half-timber buildings around the resort's heart, the tiny Jozef Dietl square.
The 19th century houses are getting a fresh coat of paint and are being turned into a cafeteria, a tourist office, a museum and a center that will sell Szczawnica's curative waters in cartons.
"I hope that in a few year's time Szczawnica will flourish and will return to its most glorious form," Mankowski said. "That's our goal."
The work is being funded by bank loans and family resources and European Union funds are being sought. A Communist-era dilapidated metal-and-glass center for massage and exercise will be torn down and replaced with a new, Swiss-style building. Until then, all treatments take place in a white pavilion that Stadnicki had built in 1936 for inhalations. The term is used to describe a therapeutic practice of having patients with respiratory ailments or allergies breathe in vapors or steam from heated mineral water.
"This is a great chance for the resort, which was falling into disrepair and stagnation," says town mayor Grzegorz Niezgoda. "The reconstruction by the inheritors is a chance to turn it back into a jewel."
Szczawnica, with some 3,000 residents, is just 70 miles southeast of the Renaissance city of Krakow, close to the border with Slovakia. It took its name from "szczawy," the Polish word for underground curative waters.
It has 12 therapeutic springs and the air is crystal clear and unpolluted, thanks to the surrounding mountains with their thick evergreen forests of larch and fir trees and no industry nearby. It offers inhalations, electromagnetic treatment and treatments for respiratory problems and asthma -- especially in children -- and a wide range of exercises and baths for the spine and rheumatism. Medications are prescribed by local doctors.
"You can come here to repair your health and link that with an active vacation," says Anna Szczepaniak, a town official who promotes tourism.
When patients have taken their day's treatments, they are free to chose from a plethora of activities -- from hiking in the Homole, a ravine cut into the mountains, or along the Biala Woda (White Water) stream, to climbing the peaks of the limestone Pieniny and Beskidy mountains. They can take walks, bicycle rides or raft trips along the Dunajec River, which winds its way among the steep white slopes topped with green trees and bushes that turn all shades of yellow, red and brown in the fall.
Horse rides into the mountains are available from a stable in the village of Jaworki, just four miles from Szczawnica. Across from the stable is a magical place called Muzyczna Owczarnia -- Musical Barn -- an old lean-to turned into a club where top jazz, folk and country musicians come from across Poland and the world for small concerts.
Longer trips can be made to the area's Niedzica and Czorsztyn medieval castles, or to see the preserved, centuries-old monks' quarters at the Red Monastery, just across the border in Slovakia. In winter, skiers keep busy on Palenica mountain.
Many of the activities were available to visitors in the 19th century -- when the resort belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- and then again between the two world wars, when it returned to Polish control.
The health resort was opened in 1820, under owner Jan Kutschera, who sold it to the Hungarian Szalay family in 1829. Jozef Szalay turned Szczawnica into a fashionable, frequented place.
In the late 19th century he bequeathed Szczawnica to Krakow's Academy of Arts and Sciences, a scientific research society. But it could not afford the obligation financially and in 1909 sold it to Count Stadnicki, who gave it a new life.
Ousted by the communists in 1948 from Szczawnica and from the family palace in nearby Nawojowa, Stadnicki moved to the city of Wroclaw. Deprived of his land and holdings, he was forced to take a state job. He died in 1982, a month short of 100 years old.
AP