Churches and synagogues

In Gi¿ycko, a small town in Masuria, in addition to the Catholic and Protestant churches, there are two Eastern-rite Christian churches (an Orthodox and a Uniate one), and also Baptist, Pentecostal and Jehovah's Witnesses' prayer-houses and meeting halls. In the tiny villages of Bohoniki and Kruszyniany along Poland's eastern borders there are two historic mosques where Polish Muslims worship. Roman Catholic churches are the most prevalent. Many cities have Gothic or Renaissance cathedrals.

Swieta Lipka in the Masurian Lake District is one of the innumerable place of pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin Mary, with a rare collection of Baroque edifices comprising a church and a Jesuit house. The sumptuous church interior houses a Baroque organ complete with moving figures. There are organ recitals in summer. Thousands of pilgrims come to Swieta Lipka, a shrine with a reputation for miraculous cures going back to the 15th century.
 

In the Bieszczady region you can traverse the Icon Trail. It begins in Sanok at Poland's largest icon museum, and runs in a 70-km loop, winding along mountain-sides and through little villages. Along the way there are two museums and ten beautiful Eastern-rite churches with priceless icons and iconostases. Ulucz Church is the oldest Eastern-rite place of worship in Poland (1510). You can follow the trail on foot, by horse, by bike, or by boat along the River San.

Other interesting religious sites include the old villages of Bialowieza and Hajnówka. They're situated on the edge of the Bialowieza Forest and the majority of their inhabitants are Orthodox Christians. The brickwork Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas in Bialowieza is a splendid edifice with a unique china iconostasis.

Every May, church choirs come to Hajnówka from all over the world, even Africa, to take part in the International Festival of Orthodox Church Music, which takes place in the grand Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. At Grabarka in the neighbouring Podlassia region there is an Orthodox Holy Mountain known as Wzgórze Pokutników (Penitents' Hill), where for centuries pilgrims have been setting up their votive crosses of wood and metal.

In the eastern regions of the country you'll find most of the Jewish historic buildings, too. Synagogues, mikvas (ritual baths) and cemeteries have been preserved in many places in the environs of Lublin and Podlassia. There's a splendid Baroque synagogue at Tykocin in the Bialystok region. It's the second biggest synagogue in Poland (the biggest is in Cracow). Many experts consider the Mannerist defensive synagogue in Lesko in the Bieszczady region, and the enormous ancient Jewish cemetery with 16th-century carved gravestones which adjoins it the principal monuments of the Ashkenazi culture in Poland.

Lezajsk, a town of a few thousand inhabitants north-east of Przemysl, has a superb defensive Observant Franciscan priory and Church of the Annunciation with a magnificent organ. But this country town has another destination for pilgrims, the ohel (tomb) of Elimelech of Lezajsk, a renowned tzaddik (Hasidic leader) of supernatural powers, who turned Lezajsk into a centre of Hassidism in the 18th century.