Swietokrzyski National Park / Heiligkreuz-Nationalpark
ul. Suchedniowska 4
PL-26010 Bodzentyn
(Swietokrzyskie / Heiligkreuz)
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The Swietokrzyski National Park was established on May 1, l950. It covers the central, best-preserved part of the Swietokrzyskie Mountains (The Holy Cross Mountains). The mountains take their name from an old Benedictine Abbey, that is located on the Lysa Mountain. These mountains are, beside the Sudety Mountains, the oldest Polish mountain formations, and are built from Paleozoic rocks. The rich geological history of this area involved successive inundations by sea, transformations of sediments into rocks, and their folding. The main mountain-building movements, the Variscian movements, occurred here some 300 million years ago. In the Quaternary period the Swietokrzyskie Mountains were temporarily covered by glaciers, which formed the boulder fields known in the Polish language as goloborza, on the slopes of the highest peaks in the range.
The present Park area is 5,917 ha, but there are plans to enlarge it to about 7,600 ha. The Park entails the the three mountain ranges, the Lysogory with the highest summits of Lysica (612 m above sea level) and Lysa Gora (Bald Mountain, 595 m above sea level), the eastern part of the Klonowskie Range with the hills Psarska (412 m above sea level) and Miejska (428 m above sea level), and th The Swietokrzyski National Park is one of the few national parks in Poland, which besides its beautiful nature and landscapes, boasts many architectural monuments. Among the most valuable is the complex of the former Benedictine abbey on Lysa Gora, called Swiety Krzyz (Holy Cross). It includes the Baroque-Neo-classical church built in 1781-1789, the Gothic cloister from the l5th century with a fragment from the 12th century, the Romanesque wall, and the Olesnicki Chapel (early l7th century), which contains the Holy Cross relic. Today, the west wing of the monastery houses the Research Laboratory and the Park's Museum. The oldest preserved piece of Polish religious prose from the 13th/l4th century, known as The Swietokrzyskie Sermons, is associated with the monastery. The remnants of the 14th century bishops' castle at Bodzentyn are an interesting example of lay architecture. The rural style of building in the Swietokrzyski region is represented by an old, l9th century farmhouse, preserved in the same village.
The Park
The Park serves a protective, scientific, educational, and recreational role. Protection is either passive (in strict reserves, where any direct interference by man is forbidden), or active (in partial reserves, through man's conscious effort to protect and restore nature). Scientific research is carried out on Park territory. The Park's Museum at Swiety Krzyz, and the historical and nature trails, serve a didactic purpose. Tourists have 26 km of marked trails inviting for exploration.
Nevertheless, the Park environment is threatened mostly by pollution, and the excessive penetration by a local population. The Swietokrzyski National Park is one of the most endangered national parks in Poland. It has already witnessed the disappearance of ca. 25 % of the lichen species, and many species of symbiotic fungi. In recent years fir trees have begun to die out, while many other living organisms have become weaker.
Fortunately, the Park has always had many devotees to its foundation and maintenance, thus hopefully will survive the human assaults. Among those who used their energy and enthusiasm to promote the cause of the Park, one should count on people such as the writer Stefan Zeromski; two great scientists Professors Wladyslaw Szafer and Wlodzimierz Sedlak; the geographer Edmund Massalski - one of the investigators of the Swietokrzyski National Park; Eugeniusz Krysztofik - the first director of the Park; and photographer Jan Siudowski - the author of beautiful pictures of the Park.
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