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Atmospheric towns
2014-09-16

Are there still places where you can sit in silence in the town centre? Is it possible to find streets, where time seems to have stopped, at which residents live quiet lives, devoid of nervous hurry?

Yes – this is the impression you can get in many towns of the Sądecczyzna Region and the Gorlice County. These places still offer an atmosphere known from the old pictures of Galician towns: Stary Sącz and its cobbled market square, Biecz and a quiet area between a Gothic parish church and town walls, Bobowa – in front of a wooden porch of a synagogue hidden in a side street, or old Muszyna or Piwniczna – along their small houses. Each of these towns has something special to offer for tourists, but a small-town atmosphere – elusive and difficult to capture – is everywhere the same. This is the charm of narrow streets with rows of small houses, sometimes made of wood, sometimes with small arcades... This is the atmosphere of small workshops and shops, where locals can shop and gossip. This is also the calm and tranquility of every market square, on which St. Florian or St. John of Nepomuk (or both of them), hidden under a roof, protects residents. It is worth to stop for a while here, in a coffee shop or a local bakery or an ice cream shop. It is worth to lose some time wandering around quiet lanes, forgetting about your watch and not thinking whether we have enough time to visit all the places or to see or try everything...

Also Nowy Sącz offers us such an atmospheric place – just near the Nowy Sącz Ethnographic Park. Right next to this great and interesting open-air museum, we can find its special part, called the Galician Town. It includes a recreated market square with a small town hall and a row of brick or wooden houses with arcades, a statue of St. Florian – as befits a Galician town – was set there and a large inn was built under a high shingle roof. So when we wander there through cobbled streets or the cobblestoned market square, around old craftsmen workshops and folk souvenir stalls, we get the impression that time has stopped or even moved us in the not-so-distant past of the Galician province.