Białowieża

Białowieża
Białowieża
Village
Car Plates	BHA
Website	www.bialowieza.biaman.pl

Białowieża [bʲawɔˈvʲɛʐa] in Poland's Podlaskie Voivodeship, in the middle of the Białowieża Forest, to which it gave its name. The village is some 21 kilometres (13 mi) east of Hajnówka and 66 km (41 mi) southeast of the province capital, Białystok.

Location

Białowieża is in eastern Poland, in Podlaskie Voivodeship, near Poland's border with Belarus. The nearest city is Białystok, the province capital. Białowieża is also connected to the town of Hajnówka, some 20 km (12.43 mi) away. The Narewka River flows through Białowieża.

Białowieża is the seat of the administrative district of Gmina Białowieża. Other villages in the district are Budy, Gródek, Pogorzelce, and Teremiski.

History

Before 1426, a wooden hunting lodge was built for King

Łutownia River, in the middle of the Białowieża Forest. The lodge was probably one of the area's first permanent settlements, though the forest had already been penetrated by hunters from nearby areas and by the King himself, who hunted there. The wooden lodge was painted white and became the namesake for both the future village and the forest (Białowieża means White Tower in Polish

).

From 1538 the forest was protected by the laws of King

John Casimir the forest was mostly unpopulated. Sporadic settlements were established in various places, but the manor in Białowieża was the only one to be permanent. In the late 17th century, several small villages were started for development of local iron ore deposits and tar production. The villages were populated with settlers from Mazovia and Podlachia

and many of them still exist.

At the end of the 16th century, probably around 1594, the royal court was moved to the area of today's Białowieża Glade. According to the inventory from 1696, Białowieża was a 25-morgic farm in the period in question. In 1710 Białowieża was affected by a plague epidemic. The settlement and the royal hunting court were burnt down, and the residents who avoided infection moved to a new place. About the burned village is reminiscent of a wooden Orthodox cross set up by the Browska Road, which according to one version means the place where the wooden Orthodox church was located, according to the other - the place where the village once ended. In the mid-eighteenth century, August III built a new hunting palace in the area of today's Palace Park, whose first description comes from an inventory from 1773. On September 27, 1752, August III organized a great hunt in the Białowieża Forest. To commemorate this event, a sandstone obelisk was erected near the palace, in which the names of the hunting entourage and the number of slaughtered animals were engraved in Polish and German. In 1765-1780 Białowieża was ruled by the Lithuanian court Treasurer Antoni Tyzenhauz. In 1784 King Stanisław August Poniatowski came to Białowieża. There were the last royal hunts in the Białowieża Forest.^[1]

As a result of the

serfs and Białowieża quickly depopulated. Tsar Alexander I reintroduced the reserve in 1801 and hired a small amount of peasants for protection of the animals. Most of them were settled in the administrative centre of the area - Białowieża. However, since most of the foresters took part in the November Uprising (500 out of 502 in total), their posts were abolished and protection was again harmed. Yet again the village of Białowieża ceased to exist. Protection was reintroduced in 1860 and the village was repopulated with Russians

.

The rapid development of Białowieża took place after 1888, when the settlement was incorporated into tsarist estates. In 1889-1894 a large hunting palace was built, designed by Nicholas de Rochefort. A number of buildings were built in the vicinity of the palace: The Świcki (Hunting House) with comfortable, separate rooms, a common billiard room, baths for the tsar's dawn (burned down in 1962), the Hofmarszałkowski House for court marshals (built in 1904), kitchen buildings, palace stable for 40 horses, laundry, telephone station, power plant (demolished in 1978), electric mill, house for servicing horses, house of the palace supervisor, house of shooters (built in 1904), woodcutter, cold store, bakery, house for preparation of forest animals, etc. As a result, a large housing estate was created. In 1895, an English-style palace park was created with an area of approximately 50 ha, designed by Walerian Kronenberg. At that time, another park with an area of 20 ha was established in another part of Białowieża, also according to the design of Kronenberg, surrounding the seat of the Board of the Appanaged Forest. Originally called a regiment, in the interwar period it received the name of the Directorate Park, which is preserved until today. 7 clerical houses were built in this area. In 1895, construction was completed and a new stone church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, located near the palace.[1]

During

Polish-Soviet War

, Białowieża was returned to Poland.

On 1 September 1939, with the onset of

Suwalska Cavalry Brigade and the Podlaska Cavalry Brigade

the improvised Cavalry Division "Zaza" consisting of the Cavalry Brigade "Pleats" and the Cavalry Brigade "Edward".

In accordance with Ribentrop-Molotov Pact, the area came under

Polish and Soviet partisans. The German authorities organized mass executions of people suspected of aiding the resistance. In July 1944 the area was captured by the Red Army. The withdrawing Wehrmacht

blew up the historic Białowieża hunting manor.

After the war Białowieża was transferred back to the communist

Biosphere Reserve under UNESCO

's Man and the Biosphere Program in 1993.

British historian Simon Schama devotes several chapters of his 1995 book Landscape and Memory to a consideration of the historical vicissitudes of the forests around Białowieża in an effort to explore the ways in which cultural imagination shapes humans' vision of the land.

Population

Today, the majority of the population of Białowieża is

Belarusian ethnic minority. There is also a significant percentage of Catholics living in Białowieża.^[2] The local native dialect is described by linguists as being of Ruthenian origin, predominantly a mixture of Belarusian, Ukrainian with significant elements of Polish and a certain influence of the Russian language. However, this dialect is gradually disappearing and an increasing part of the population of Białowieża uses standard Polish or Podlasie-Polesian dialects of the Polish language.^[2]

Sites of interest

Białowieża National Park
Palace park (Park Pałacowy) - covering the area of 470,000 m² (5,059,037.90 sq ft), built in 1890. It is a park in English style with a large view to Białowieża National Park. Upon the ponds there is an obelisk for the memory of hunting in 1752 when king
Augustus III
hunted in Białowieża forests. There are also several tsarist red brick buildings from the 19th century, and a gate which is the only remnant of the wooden manor.
Ecological Museum (Muzeum Przyrodniczo-Leśne im. prof. Jana Miklaszewskiego) - museum of natural history
St. Nicholas the Miraculous' Orthodox Church - with a unique iconostasis from Chinese porcelain.
Open-air folk museum (Skansen) - with original huts, windmills and wells
PTTK Tourist Service^[3]
Nature expert guides (birdwatching, bison and other wildlife observations) you can find at the Białowieża Forest website^[4]
Graveyard Chapel of
St. Cyril (Kaplica św. Cyryla) - from 1873 with an 18th-century icon
.