Krynica-Zdrój as a spa — mineral springs, Zuber's boreholes and two centuries of cures

How a mountain village became a spa

The healing qualities of the springs first appear in a work by Gabriel Rzączyński published in the first half of the eighteenth century. What settled matters, though, was the Austrian treasury taking over the Krynica estates in 1783. The authorities sent Balthasar Hacquet, a professor at the university in Lviv, to assess the springs; his favourable report set everything else in motion, and ten years later a government commissioner from Nowy Sącz bought the land around them.

The spa counts 1807 as its real beginning, the year Jan Nennel became its first resident physician; Józef August Schultess had published the first scientific descriptions of the waters a year earlier. Progress was slow for decades. In 1852 the authorities ordered the unprofitable baths closed, and the estate administration simply dragged its feet over carrying the order out.

Krynica was saved by a group of Kraków doctors led by Józef Dietl, rector of the Jagiellonian University. He promoted the waters, sent patients here and, on behalf of a commission of experts, petitioned the Austrian government to develop the resort. Rapid growth followed after 1856, and Dietl is remembered as the father of Polish balneology.

Waters, drilling and dry carbon dioxide

In 1911 the geologist Rudolf Zuber began a borehole that reached 810 metres and struck an alkaline mineral water, one of the strongest in Europe. The "Zuber I" well produced water in 1914 with the highest concentration of mineral content known at the time, and it carried the town's name well beyond Galicia.

The second borehole, "Zuber II", went down to 952 metres and found something different: large reserves of dry carbon dioxide, used for dry gas baths. Nowhere else in Poland offers this on the same scale, and it is the genuine curiosity of treatment here.

After the First World War new shafts brought in the Jan and Słotwinka springs, which join the Główny, Józef, Mieczysław and Tadeusz waters; the Karol spring no longer exists. The health ministry classes Krynica as a mountain spa, and the town was recognised as a state spa serving the public interest in 1922. Treatment focuses on conditions of the digestive tract, the urinary system, the circulation and the metabolism.

Three pump rooms, three eras

The Słotwinka pump room of 1806 is the oldest building in Krynica. It was later moved into Słotwiński Park, where it works seasonally — a timber pavilion on a completely different scale from anything in the centre.

The neo-Renaissance Old Spa House dates from 1889 and has kept its original ballroom. The Mieczysław pump room inside it was restored and reopened in 2007. The New Spa House, by contrast, is a modernist sanatorium designed in 1939 by Professor Witold Minkiewicz — architecturally a different world from its nineteenth-century neighbour.

Largest of all is the Main Pump Room of 1971, some 3,500 square metres with a concert hall and a winter garden. Seen one after another, these four buildings tell the whole story of Polish spa culture: a wooden pavilion, then historicism, then modernism, then late socialist architecture built for thousands of guests at once.

Getting there

• By train — Krynica is the terminus of line 105, opened in 1911, with services from Nowy Sącz, Tarnów, Kraków and Warsaw. A spa town with a station within walking distance of the pump rooms is a rarity in the Polish mountains.
• By car — voivodeship roads 981 and 971 meet in the town. National road 75 ran through Krynica until 2006, when its route was redirected towards the Slovak border.
• By bus — long-distance coaches link the town with many Polish cities, including Kraków, Katowice, Łódź, Kielce, Warsaw and Lublin.
• On foot — the whole spa quarter, from Słotwiński Park to the Main Pump Room, can be walked in one go; a car is only needed for trips into the surrounding valleys.

Worth knowing

Krynica's waters differ more than visitors expect, from mild sparkling springs to very concentrated ones. The strongest are taken in small quantities and are not meant to quench thirst, so it is worth reading the labels at the taps before filling a whole cup.

The town has just under ten thousand residents and sits between 560 and 650 metres above sea level, yet in season it takes several times that number of visitors. If quiet matters to you, come outside the summer and winter school holidays, when the promenade, the pump rooms and the parks belong mainly to people taking the waters.

Split the visit in two. Spend the morning in the spa quarter among the pump rooms, parks and architecture, then go up into the hills in the afternoon: the town lies at the foot of the Jaworzyna range, and the view from above makes sense of the whole valley. One day covers both, though not in a hurry.

How to get there and practical info

Location

the Kryniczanka valley in the Beskid Sądecki, Lesser Poland; 560 to 650 metres above sea level

What it is

a statutory mountain spa; recognised as a state spa serving the public interest in 1922

Beginnings

first scientific descriptions of the waters in 1806, first spa physician in 1807, expansion after 1856 thanks to Józef Dietl

Therapeutic resources

mineral waters of varying strength, dry carbon dioxide from the "Zuber II" borehole, therapeutic peat and the mountain climate

Treatment profile

digestive tract, urinary system, circulation and metabolic conditions

Zuber's boreholes

"Zuber I" from 1911, 810 metres deep; "Zuber II" — 952 metres, reserves of dry carbon dioxide

Pump rooms

Słotwinka (1806, the oldest building in town), Mieczysław in the Old Spa House (1889), the Main Pump Room (1971, about 3,500 square metres)

Time needed

a day for the spa quarter plus a trip into the hills, a week for a course of treatment

Current hours and tickets

Krynica on the official Polish Tourism Organisation portal

When to go