Travel Guide Tarnów

Situated on the edge of the plains and mountains, Tarnów is the most important town in the centre of the pre-Carpathian mountains. If today it is the seat of a large chemical industry, the town keeps the traces of its prestigious past, when it was a fief of the Tarnowski family. In the 16th century, Jan Tarnowski, a scholar and governor of Krakow, turned the city into an important cultural and artistic centre. But from the end of the century, wars and fires marked the decline of Tarnów. In the 18th century, Kraków regained its importance by establishing the army headquarters there and choosing it as the political seat of the region. At the end of the 19th century, Tarnów became the third largest city in Galicia, after Kraków and Lviv (now in the Ukraine). Before 1939, half of the population in Tarnów was Jewish, but the Nazis decimated almost the entire community. The same fate befell the city's Gypsy community, the largest in Poland. The Nazis exterminated more than half of them, while most of the survivors preferred to flee to more suitable areas. Apart from its beautiful Renaissance market square and its preserved pedestrian streets, which make it the most charming old town in the Carpathian region (except Krakow, of course), this very special city has a strong appeal because of its Jewish (past) and Gypsy (present) marks.