Tarnow - Pearl of Renaissance

A cover from Tarnow - Poland 🇵🇱 with the stamp showing the Tarnow Town Hall and a postmark from Tarnow postoffice.

 

Year of issue - 1959

The cachets are those of the Regional Museum in TARNOW and the Poland Tourism and Sightseeing society (PTTK). 

https://youtu.be/wluQGSHELSU

Tarnów is a city in southeastern Poland. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarnów Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east–west connection from Lviv to Kraków, and two additional lines, one of which links the city with the Slovak border. 

Tarnów is known for its traditional Polish architecture, which was strongly influenced by foreign cultures and foreigners that once lived in the area, most notably Jews, Germans and Austrians. The entire Old Town, featuring 16th century tenements, houses and defensive walls, has been fully preserved. 

Tarnów is also the warmest city of Poland, with the highest long-term mean annual temperature in the whole country.

First mentioned in a document dated 1124, Tarnów was granted city rights by King Władysław Łokietek in 1330 – an event celebrated by a fine monument of the King on ul. Wałowa before the stairs leading up to Plac Katedralny. It was at this time that the medieval layout the city retains to this day was created, with its latticed streets and central market square (Rynek), reached by stairways from a lower, surrounding loop (formerly the city walls and defensive towers).

A privately owned city until 1787, Tarnów’s greatest period of growth came under the illustrious, avant-garde nobleman Jan Tarnowskiduring the 16th century when the Old Town was largely reconstructed in the manner that today earns it the accolade of being Poland’s ‘Pearl of the Renaissance.’ The Tarnowski clan expired without an heir in 1567 and the city was later incorporated into the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during the era of Polish partitions. Tarnów’s citizens were quick to join the Polish legions when WWI broke out and the region saw many battles between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies, resulting in a trail of WWI memorial sites and cemeteries in the city’s vicinity.

In October 1918 Tarnów gained notoriety when it became the first Polish city to reclaim independence after 146 years of occupation, and again on August 28th, 1939 when German terrorists detonated an explosive in the city’s train station killing 20 people, injuring 32, and leading some historians to claim that WWII officially started here in Tarnów. The bombs would start falling from the sky six days later and by September 7th the Nazis had captured the city.

The first Jews settled in Tarnów in the mid-15th century and by 1939 their numbers had reached 25,000 – nearly half the city’s total population. On June 14th 1940, 728 Tarnów residents (mostly Poles, in fact) became the first victims of Auschwitz; of 40,000 Jews crammed into Tarnów’s ghetto, over 10,000 were executed and the rest deported to the Bełżec death camp. Today Tarnów’s Jewish heritage remains through several historical monuments and sites in and around the former ghetto, though no active Jewish community has survived.

Tarnów was a stronghold of resistance during Nazi occupation, before eventual ‘liberation’ into the communist regime on January 17, 1945. The city developed rapidly in the postwar period as the monstrous soviet-era residential blocks in the north-east part of the city became home to over one-third of its 100,000 population in the mid-70s. The rise in the prices of meat in July 1980 inspired a series of strikes in Tarnów predating the Gdańsk shipyard strikes that would eventually lead to the communist regime’s collapse by over a month. Since Poland’s ascension to the EU in 2004, Tarnów has enjoyed the revitalisation of its Old Town and is gaining an increasing reputation as a noteworthy tourist destination.

The Tarnowski family used the "Leliwa coat of arms" and their motto was: "Tendite ad astra viri". It is a quotation from Valerius Flaccus'Argonautica, book I, verse 563.C

Town Square

Shape and size of the Town Square remain unchanged since the location of Tarnów in 1330 although the buildings date to the 16^th to 18^th century.

Situated in the center of the town, the Town Square has always been a place where social life and trade concentrated. Its location in the central part of the town hill, on the ground slightly lowering towards south was advantageous as far as a rain water drainage is concerned. The dimensions of the Square in relation to other towns are rather typical and its sixty-six acre area places it among smaller ones. The buildings, wooden at first, were replaced consequently with a brick structures from the beginning of the 15^th century, starting with masonry cellars built under a wooden house.

Postcards from Tarnow 

The first mention in the sources written about the town hall in Tarnów dates from 1448 and 1463. Originally it could be a wooden or wooden-brick building, which together with the whole building of the city within the walls, was destroyed in the fire in 1494. In place of it was formed two brick buildings standing side by side in the center of the market square. They acted as the seat of the magistrates court and the municipal authorities. Between the buildings was a 3 meters deep “pit of the villains”. It was framed well, which most likely served as an urban prison.

    In the first quarter of the 16th century, separate buildings were merged together and the floor was added. This remodeling was still in late gothic style. In the middle of the 16th century began the most important reconstruction and expansion of the object, which owes its present appearance. The town hall was enlarged with a western section and topped with a high, brick, attic wall, and in the south-east corner of the building was added a avant-corps, which contained a staircase. The tower was raised to a cylindrical part and a porch was placed on it, where the watch guard was supposed to alert of the fire and the enemy.

    In 1792 the town hall building was again completely destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt but with significant changes. In the years 1889 – 1892 was renovated and rebuilt in the spirit of historicism. Then, in the years 1962-1968 and in the first decade of the 21st century, complex revalorization was under way.

Today the town hall has been preserved in the renaissance style of the mid 16th century. The building contains many elements from earlier gothic buildings, among others the lower, quadrangular side of tower, the walls in today’s east bay, the old entrance portal and the cellars. Also, the “pit of the criminals”, now glazed, is visible from the market square on the north side. Today the Town Hall is the seat of the Regional Museum in Tarnów and is open to the public. 

Thanks Wojtek for those beautiful postcards and a lovely envelope from your hometown !