Village, Jesuits, industrialist
The first record is early and entirely ordinary: in 1347 a settlement called Heyde appears, held by the von Glaubitz family. In 1538 the town of Kłodzko bought the village to endow its hospital, in 1595 the estate passed to the Jesuits, and in 1645 Swedish troops burned it. Between 1706 and 1707 the Jesuits put up a manor that from the mid-18th century began taking in patients — the first trace of a spa here.
The sour, naturally fizzing water was written about as early as the 17th century, but nobody exploited it seriously for a long time. After the suppression of the order in 1773 the estate went to the Prussian state, and only after 1873 did the Wrocław industrialist Wenzel Hoffmann buy the spa. The local peat deposit was worked from 1879, and the railway from Kłodzko arrived in 1890.
The real leap came at the start of the 20th century, with a change of owner and serious money for expansion. In 1903–1904 the Wielka Pieniawa spring was drilled, and in 1906 a comfortable cure house of a hundred and thirty rooms opened — today's sanatorium of the same name. Visitor numbers multiplied over the following decades, and Polanica caught up with the valley's older resorts without having their history.
What you drink here
Polanica's waters are calcium bicarbonate springs with a very high carbon dioxide content. The most important intake, Wielka Pieniawa, is also the newest, dating from the borehole of the early 20th century. Alongside it work the Józef and Jerzy springs, whose water is bottled. The spa draws on several intakes in all, some for drinking cures and some for baths.
The second resource is peat from the local deposit, in use since the last quarter of the 19th century. The treatment profile is tightly drawn: cardiovascular conditions and disorders of the digestive tract. The town also runs smoking-cessation programmes, which gives it a niche of its own on the Polish spa map.
The setting does part of the work. The town stretches between roughly three hundred and fifty and five hundred and sixty metres above sea level, in the valley of the Bystrzyca Dusznicka at the foot of Piekielna Góra on the south-eastern edge of the Stołowe Mountains; its southern part, Sokołówka, already climbs the slopes of the Bystrzyckie Mountains. The climate is mild and submontane — sheltered, without sharp contrasts.
A spa quarter of one piece
The centre of Polanica is easy to read because it went up quickly and to a single plan. The spa park was laid out in 1906; since its renewal in 2011 the old trees, azaleas, rhododendrons and magnolias show properly again, flowering in May and turning the park into something else entirely. Beside the park stands the cure house with its mineral water pump room of 1911, Art Nouveau crossed with classicism, with a promenade hall — the place where, in bad weather, people simply walk up and down.
A few steps further is the spa theatre, opened in 1925, with just under three hundred seats; after modernisation in 2010–2011 it still does the job it was built for. The rest of the ensemble is the neo-baroque church of the Assumption of 1910, the old Jesuit manor from the start of the 18th century, and the railway station of 1890.
Polanica is small — about six thousand people on seventeen square kilometres — and that works in its favour. Pump room to theatre, theatre to church, church back to park: a few minutes each, no transfers, no planning. It is a spa you can see on foot in one afternoon, and then stay in for a week.
Chess, poetry and amateur film
Polanica holds a cultural position out of all proportion to its size, mostly through chess. The Akiba Rubinstein Memorial, named after one of the strongest players of the first half of the 20th century, drew leading competitors here for decades, and the town has a monument to him. In chess circles the name Polanica is better known than it is in guidebooks.
The second thread is literature and film. The Kłodzko Poetry Springs ran here from 1966 to 1974, and the POL-8 international amateur film festival from 1965 until 2010 — one of the longest-running events of its kind in Europe. Both survive mainly in names and plaques, but they explain how a town this small came to have a theatre with a real auditorium.
Getting there
- By car — national road 8 (European route E67) from Kłodzko, about twelve kilometres south-west; the town sits directly on it.
- By regional road 388 — the quieter link towards Duszniki-Zdrój and the Bystrzyckie Mountains.
- By train — a station on the Kłodzko–Kudowa-Zdrój line, in a building dating from 1890.
- By bus — the bus station is central, close to the spa quarter.
- By air — the nearest airport is Wrocław, a little over a hundred kilometres away.
Worth knowing
Polanica is the easiest base for the Kłodzko Valley without a car: it is on the main road, has rail and bus stations in the centre, and Duszniki, Kudowa and Kłodzko are all close. At the same time it is quiet enough that sitting in the park in the evening counts as the plan.
If you can choose, come in May, when the azaleas and rhododendrons flower in the spa park — the one moment when that park is genuinely a sight. Treatments, opening arrangements and the theatre programme change with the season, so the town's own site is the thing to check.
How to get there and practical info
- Location
- valley of the Bystrzyca Dusznicka below Piekielna Góra, south-eastern edge of the Stołowe Mountains, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Kłodzko county; about twelve kilometres from Kłodzko
- Elevation
- roughly 350 to 560 metres above sea level
- What it is
- a statutory spa town; sour waters recorded in the 17th century, cures in the former Jesuit manor from the mid-18th century
- Healing resources
- calcium bicarbonate sparkling waters rich in carbon dioxide, plus peat from a local deposit
- Main springs
- Wielka Pieniawa (drilled 1903–1904), Józef and Jerzy
- Conditions treated
- cardiovascular and digestive disorders; smoking-cessation programmes
- Spa park
- laid out in 1906, renewed in 2011; azaleas, rhododendrons, magnolias
- Spa architecture
- cure house with pump room of 1911 (Art Nouveau and classicism, promenade hall), spa theatre of 1925, cure house of 1906
- Other monuments
- neo-baroque church of the Assumption, 1910; Jesuit manor, 1706–1707; railway station, 1890
- Culture
- Akiba Rubinstein Memorial chess tournament, Kłodzko Poetry Springs 1966–1974, POL-8 festival 1965 to 2010
- Size
- about six thousand residents, area a little over seventeen square kilometres
- How long to stay
- an afternoon for the spa itself; several days if you use it as a base
- Current hours and tickets
- official website of Polanica-Zdrój
When to go
May is the month that matters here, with azaleas, rhododendrons and magnolias out in the spa park. April leaves the park bare, but empty and quiet.
Full season, with concerts and life on the promenade. The valley gets close in a heatwave, so it pays to head uphill into the Bystrzyckie Mountains or onto the edge of the Stołowe range.
A good time for both treatment and walking: fewer people, the slopes of Piekielna Góra turning, and settled weather.
The spa and the promenade hall work all year, and in bad weather the pump room stands in for a walk. Snow in the valley is often thin; for skiing people drive up to Zieleniec.
Other sights in Kotlina Kłodzka
Straight-line distances from „Polanica-Zdrój — spa town" — calculated from real coordinates. By road it is often further.
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