Towns and villages of Poland

Covers from Poland 🇵🇱 from various small villages and towns ! 

This cover is from Iwaniska. 

Iwaniska is a village in Opatów County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It is the seat of the administrative district called Gmina Iwaniska. It is close to Opatów and the regional capital Kielce. Iwaniska lies on the Koprzywianka river in historic Lesser Poland in the southeastern corner of the Swietokrzyskie Mountains. 

In 1403, the influential Zborowski family decided to found a town here. The decline of Iwaniska was marked by the Swedish invasion of Poland; in 1656 the town was plundered and completely burned by Cossacks. Iwaniska, in common with many other places throughout eastern Europe, was home to a vibrant Jewish community until World War II. 

A cover posted in Opatów of Kielce 

Opatów is a town in Poland, in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, historic province of Lesser Poland. It is the capital of Opatów County. Its population is 7,833 (2007). Opatów is located among the hills of Lesser Polish Upland, with the Opatówka river dividing the town into two parts.

For centuries, until the Partitions of Poland, Opatów was an important regional center of Lesser Poland. It belonged to a number of noble families (Tarnowski family, Ostrogski family, Lubomirski family, Potocki family, and Karski family), and remained in private hands until 1864. In the 18th century, Opatów became home to a number of Greeks, who had escaped to Poland from Turkish occupation of their homeland. Opatów was the first town in the Sandomierz Voivodeship, in which Jews settled. During World War II the community was herded into the new Opatów Ghetto set up by the Nazis along the Joselewicza, Zatylna, Wąska and Starowałowa Streets. The ghetto held about ten thousand Jews.

A cover form Stary Sacz 

Stary Sącz  is one of the oldest towns in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, founded in the 13th century. The history of the town dates back to the early Middle Ages when Duchess Kinga, the daughter of the King Béla IV of Hungary and the wife of Duke Bolesław V the Chaste, received the land called Sącz, together with surrounding villages, from her husband in the year 1257. In the year 1358 the town received a privilege of the Magdeburg law, confirmed by King Casimir III the Great. However the town was often damaged by disasters, of which fires were the most harmful. The town also did not manage to escape floods, plagues and wars. During the biggest fire, in 1795, almost all the town has burned down.

One of Poland’s biggest landscape parks stretches all over the range of the mountains Radziejowa and Jaworzyna in the Beskid Sądecki region. There are many trails waiting for keen hikers. Some of them start in Stary Sącz - The Yellow Route and The Blue Route ! 

I wonder which route my friends took ?!? 

Thanks Wojtek for these lovely covers and the wonderful postcards :) I am soon going to have a separate space for postcards from Poland !