Rabka-Zdrój — iodine-bromine brine and Poland's largest children's spa

Salt before the spa

The first mention of Rabka is a mention of salt. Jan Długosz recorded the name as Sal in Rabschyca, citing a document of Bolesław the Chaste from 1254, and German-language sources say salt has been drawn from these springs since the thirteenth century. The Cistercians, who held the estate, probably used the brine; in 1595 the village belonged to Anna Jordanowa née Sieniawska.

The story of these springs includes the opposite case too. In 1813, after a physician's report, the government ordered six springs to be filled in with stones. Science reversed that: in 1858 the Kraków chemist Adolf Aleksandrowicz and the physician Fryderyk Skobel analysed the brine and judged it one of the strongest iodine-bromine waters in Europe.

After that things moved quickly. The first bathing establishment opened in 1864, and eight years later, in 1872, a facility for children — which settled the character of the place for the next century and a half. Rabka received town rights only in 1953, and took its present name, Rabka-Zdrój, in 1999.

What is in the water

The basis is a salty, iodine-and-bromine, ferruginous brine. A description from 1860 names six springs and lists the active components: chlorine, iodine, bromine, alkali carbonates, iron, a little lime and carbonic acid. The water emerges at around twelve degrees, and the salt content of two springs was then given in grains per pound — 126.41 and 177.6 — which by the measures of the day meant a genuinely strong solution.

Two things were made of that brine. First, baths and inhalations, offered in the spa establishments from the mid-nineteenth century. Second, newer and open to anyone without a referral, the graduation towers in the spa park, in operation since June 2009. You walk around them and breathe the aerosol thrown off as brine trickles over brushwood — an effect close to the seaside, four hundred kilometres from the sea.

Treatment here centres on the airways, the circulatory system, metabolic disorders and allergies. After the war Rabka worked first as a tuberculosis centre, then shifted to asthma and upper respiratory conditions. The climate is gentler than the altitude suggests: the basin lies at roughly five hundred to five hundred and sixty metres, counts about two thousand one hundred hours of sunshine a year, and nearly half its area is forest. On the other hand, every foothill basin chokes on its own air during winter inversions, so anyone with asthma should check the air quality forecast before travelling.

City of the Children of the World

Rabka has held that title since 1996, granted by the governor of Lesser Poland at the request of the International Chapter of the Order of the Smile. A museum of that order was set up in the town the same year. This is not a slogan bolted onto an ordinary resort: a children's centre has run here since 1962, and Rabka is the largest children's health resort in Poland.

It shows in the town more than in the brochures. There is the Rabcio puppet theatre, and since 2014 an international children's literature festival. The Rabkoland family amusement park houses the Order of the Smile museum. The large children's sanatoria have long been run by public institutions — the Warsaw Institute of Mother and Child and a Silesian rehabilitation centre for children.

For an adult traveller this means something simple: in Rabka you do not have to look for something for a child to do, because the whole town is arranged around it. The reverse holds just as firmly — anyone after the hush of a nineteenth-century spa will find it in the park early in the morning rather than during the day.

Beyond the spa park

The finest monument is a wooden church from the start of the seventeenth century, built in 1600–1606, consecrated in 1634 by Bishop Tomasz Oborski, with a tower added in the eighteenth century. Since 9 August 1936 it has housed the Władysław Orkan Museum, assembled between 1929 and 1936 on the initiative of the Polish Tatra Society. The collection runs to about five thousand items, and in 2016 the museum received a bronze Gloria Artis medal.

Besides the towers, the spa park holds a monument to John Paul II and the start of the Papal Trail, a 1945 monument to Soviet soldiers, and a bench with a figure of Antonina Zachara-Wnękowa set up in 2018. The town also has a cinema and ski lifts, and nearby Chabówka has an open-air railway museum.

From the darker history there remains the memory of the ghetto set up in 1941 for some six hundred and fifty people, deported to Bełżec in August 1942, and of a German police school closed on 28 August 1945. In August 1945 the house where surviving Jewish children were living was attacked by a group linked to the underground.

The mountains above the town

Rabka is a good way into the Gorce — a range of about five hundred and fifty square kilometres, thirty-three kilometres long and fifteen wide, with Turbacz (1310 m) at its centre and six ridges running off it. The Gorce National Park occupies the heart of the range. Other summits include Jaworzyna Kamienicka (1288 m), Kiczora (1282 m), Kudłoń (1274 m) and Lubań (1211 m).

On the other side of the basin the Beskid Wyspowy begins, its nearest peak being Luboń Wielki (1022 m). The combination is characteristic of Rabka and convenient: a mild resort down in the valley, with both the Gorce and the isolated domes to the north within a day's reach. Three streams run through the town — the Poniczanka, the Słonka and the Skomielnianka — all into the Raba.

Getting there

• By car — the S7 expressway, part of European route E77, runs along the edge of town at Zabornia; national road 47 begins in Rabka and national road 28 passes through the northern districts.
• By train — line 104 from Chabówka to Nowy Sącz, with a station at Rabka-Zdrój; regional trains serve Kraków, Katowice and Zakopane, and long-distance services run from the Baltic coast.
• From Kraków — about fifty kilometres to the south; the nearest airport is Kraków-Balice.
• Around town — the spa quarter is compact and walkable, but the approaches to the slopes and viewpoints are climbs.

Worth knowing

Rabka has a little over twelve thousand residents on thirty-six square kilometres, so one day covers the town and two or three cover the town plus the mountains. A sound division: spa park and graduation towers in the morning, the museum in the wooden church afterwards, the hills the next day from early on.

Two things are worth knowing in advance. First, this is a resort built around children, and in season you feel it — for quiet, May, September and October are better. Second, which treatments, exhibitions and buildings are open shifts through the year, so check the details at source before you come.

How to get there and practical info

Location

the Rabka basin on the northern slopes of the Gorce, Lesser Poland voivodeship, Nowy Targ county; about 500–560 metres above sea level

What it is

a statutory Polish health resort; first bathing establishment 1864, children's facility from 1872, town rights since 1953

Healing resources

chloride, iodine-bromine and ferruginous brines at about 12 degrees; brine graduation towers in the spa park since June 2009

Main directions of treatment

respiratory and circulatory conditions, metabolic disorders and allergies; a strong children's profile

Distinction

the title "City of the Children of the World", granted in 1996 by the governor of Lesser Poland at the request of the International Chapter of the Order of the Smile

Chief monument

the wooden church of 1600–1606, housing the Władysław Orkan Museum, opened on 9 August 1936

Time needed

a day for the town and the spa; two or three days with walks into the Gorce and the Beskid Wyspowy

Current opening and tickets

official site of the town of Rabka-Zdrój

When to go