What to See in Poznań - Top Sights and Attractions

Poznań Fara, also known as the Parish Church or simply Fara, is a Roman Catholic basilica located in the heart of the Old Town district in Poznań, western Poland. It is one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, the most important Christian temple alongside the Cathedral and the finest example of Baroque architecture in Poland. The full name of the Church is Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Mary Magdalene and Saint Stanislaus. It is currently part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Poznań.

Built between 1651 and 1701, the structure was engineered by Polish and Italian masters in the Baroque style, who also incorporated Roman architectural aspects such as the monumental Corinthian columns in the interior. In the mid-18th century Pompeo Ferrari designed the main altar standing at 17 meters in height and the main entrance from the Old Town. In 1876 an organ constructed by Friedrich Ladegast was installed inside the Church. The Fara, like most of the city, was spared from destruction during World War II.^[1]

Museum of Applied Arts in Poznań is a branch of the National Museum in Poznań, art museum opened in 1965 as the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Since 1991, in connection with the expansion of the collection profile and the change of the exhibition, under the current name. It is located in the Royal Castle in Poznań, built in 1249, initially as a residential tower of the PoznańPrince Przemysl I.

As a branch of the National Museum in Poznań, it is entered in the State Register of Museums kept by the minister in charge of culture and national heritage protection.

The Museum has 11,000 exhibits, such as fabrics, furniture, glass, silver, and others, which are exhibited in chronological order, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It was closed for a long time because of the reconstruction of the Royal Castle. The reopening took place on 26 March 2017. Part of the rooms of the reconstructed royal residence is intended for the exposition of the museum's collections. A lookout tower had been opened earlier.^[4]

Man-made place for various activities. Lake Malta, known also as the Maltański Reservoir, is an artificial lake in Poznań, Poland. It was formed in 1952 as a result of the damming of the Cybina River. It is about 2.2 km long, which makes the lake the biggest man-made lake of the city. The water is 3.1 m deep on average with a maximum about 5 m. There are a number of recreational attractions along the edge of the lake including:

• an artificial ski slope,
• an artificial ice rink,
• a zoological garden,
• Kolejka Parkowa Maltanka - a narrow gauge railway,
• the Mound of Freedom,
• seasonal bikes rental - MaltaBike

The lake also has one of the oldest man-made rowing venues in Europe - The Malta Regatta Course. This dates back to 1952 and has held a number of Rowing World Cup events. It also hosted the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in 1990 and 2001, and did so again in 2010.

The lake also gives its name to the Malta theatre festival, held in Poznań annually in June, with some of the shows taking place next to the lake.

The name of the lake comes from the Knights Hospitaller also known as Knights of Malta. The lake was built on land owned by Church of St. John of Jerusalem Outside the Walls, given to the order in 1187 by duke Mieszko III the Old.

Because of the importance of the lake for the city of Poznań, various methods to improve its water quality have been investigated.^[8]

Wielkopolska Museum of Independence is a museum, a local cultural institution organized by the city of Poznań. The scope of the museum's activities includes collecting and making available collections on the independence uprisings and organic work during the partitions, the period of the Second Republic of Poland, fighting and martyrdom during World War II, as well as protests and opposition activities in the years 1945-1989. Before the name was changed, the museum was known as the Wielkopolska Museum of the Fight for Independence.

The Chairman of the Museum Council in the 2016–2020 term is professor Zbigniew Pilarczyk from Adam Mickiewicz University, while the Director is Tomasz Łęcki.

The museum is entered in the list of museums kept by the minister in charge of culture and national heritage protection.^[12]

Poznań Fara, also known as the Parish Church or simply Fara, is a Roman Catholic basilica located in the heart of the Old Town district in Poznań, western Poland. It is one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, the most important Christian temple alongside the Cathedral and the finest example of Baroque architecture in Poland. The full name of the Church is Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Mary Magdalene and Saint Stanislaus. It is currently part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Poznań.

Built between 1651 and 1701, the structure was engineered by Polish and Italian masters in the Baroque style, who also incorporated Roman architectural aspects such as the monumental Corinthian columns in the interior. In the mid-18th century Pompeo Ferrari designed the main altar standing at 17 meters in height and the main entrance from the Old Town. In 1876 an organ constructed by Friedrich Ladegast was installed inside the Church. The Fara, like most of the city, was spared from destruction during World War II.^[15]

Catholic church in Poznań, Poland. The Church of Saint John of Jerusalem outside the walls is a Roman Catholic parish church in the city of Poznań in western Poland. The original church on this site was built at the end of the 11th century, making it one of the oldest churches within the present boundaries of Poznań.

It stands on the south-eastern corner of the Rondo Śródka roundabout, between the neighbourhoods of Śródka and Komandoria, within the city's Nowe Miasto district. It is close to the north-west corner of Lake Malta. The epithet "Outside the Walls" refers to the fact that it lay outside Poznań's medieval defensive walls.

The church is dedicated to St. John of Jerusalem, the patron saint of the Knights Hospitallers, to whom the church belonged until 1832.^[16]

Śródka is a historic neighbourhood of the city of Poznań in western Poland. It lies on the right bank of the Warta river, opposite the island of Ostrów Tumski where the city's cathedral is situated. It belonged to the former district of Nowe Miasto; in the current administrative division of Poznań, Ostrów Śródka is part of an osiedle which also includes Ostrów Tumski and the neighbourhoods of Zawady and Komandoria.

Archaeologists have found evidence of settlement in Śródka which may date from the ninth century. By 1231 Sródka was a ducal settlement, and in 1288 it was granted to the bishops of Poznań. It obtained town rights in the 15th century (Ostrówek, at its western end, was a separate town), and was incorporated into the city of Poznań in 1800. Its name is related to the Polish word środa ("Wednesday"), this being the day of the weekly market once held there.

The district is centred on Rynek Śródecki (Śródka Marketplace), in the centre of which stands the 16th-century St. Margaret's church. On the north-west corner of the square is an Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, founded in 1665, the present building dating from the late 18th century. The small Malta cinema, sharing its name with nearby Lake Malta, was housed in the building next to the Oratory on the north side of the square, until its closure on 10 May 2010 (it is due to reopen in new premises in Jeżyce later in the year).

Since 2015 the Śródka Tale Mural painted on one of its tenement houses, makes up an important landmark of Śródka Marketplace. The mural refers to a history of the neighbourhood and features some local characters such as a butcher, a trumpeter as well as Władysław Odonic, the Duke of all Greater Poland.

On the eastern edge of Śródka is the church of St. Kazimierz, built for the Franciscans in 1685, with a monastery added in 1704. The monastery was dissolved by the Prussian authorities in 1794. The church currently belongs to the Polish branch of the Old Catholic Church, and the former monastery building is used as a school for the deaf.

A main road runs just south of Śródka, connecting it with Ostrów Tumski and central Poznań to the west, and with the roundabout called Rondo Śródka at the district's south-east corner. This road was built in the 1960s, with the demolition of some buildings on the southern edge of Śródka. Since 7 December 2007 Śródka has also been linked with Ostrów Tumski by a footbridge ("Bishop Jordan's Bridge", Most biskupa Jordana), constructed from the former main span of the now reconstructed St. Roch road bridge which crosses the Warta further south. A bridge previously existed in this place until 1969.

The ancient Church of St. John of Jerusalem Outside the Walls lies on the south-east corner of Rondo Śródka, just outside the district of Śródka itself.^[20]

Budnicze Houses - located south of the town hall, a group of three- or four-story narrow townhouses dating from the first half of the 16th century.

In contrast to the patrician tenement houses in the frontages of the market square, these belonged to somewhat poorer merchants. In their early Renaissance arcades they used to trade in fish, candles, torches and salt. Hence their former name - herring booths. It is one of the few examples of terraced market buildings. The current name comes from the fact that the seat of the Brotherhood of Budniks was located in tenement no. 17, which is evidenced by the coat of arms with three palms and a herring and the signature Fraternitatis Budnicorum.

It is known that in 1418 the town authorities put 17 herring houses into use. At the beginning of the 16th century some of the buildings received brick arcades. In 1534 the town authorities agreed to let the guild of builders build arcades for all buildings.

As time passed, the arcades were walled up, creating small stores. The tenement houses were almost completely destroyed during World War II. After the war, the arcades were reconstructed using the original Renaissance details. Narrow, one- and two-windowed facades of most of the tenements are covered with polychromes designed by Zbigniew Bednarowicz and made in the years 1953-1961.

From the south-west the group is closed by the former municipal office, also called the Municipal Writers' House, occupying plot no. 10. Since 1961 it has been the seat of the Cyril Ratajski Society of Poznań City Lovers.

Brama Poznania ICHOT, formerly ICHOT - a cultural institution in Poznań dedicated to presenting, interpreting and promoting the history and heritage of Ostrow Tumski in Poznań. It is located in a complex of buildings located in the oldest part of the city, in Śródka and Ostrów Tumski, near the Jordan Bridge, on the bank of the Cybina River. The complex consists of a modern main building and the renovated Cathedral Sluice building, connected by a footbridge over the Cybina. The Poznań Gate ICHOT is operated by and is the seat of the Poznań Heritage Centre, a local government cultural institution of the city of Poznań.

The main part of the Poznań Gate ICHOT complex is a multimedia exhibition devoted to the past and present of Ostrów Tumski in Poznań. The Poznań Gate ICHOT also conducts exhibition, educational, publishing, training, popularization and other cultural activities in the field of cultural tourism.

Zoological garden in Poznań, Poland. The Old Zoo in Poznań is one of the oldest zoological gardens in Poland, located in the city of Poznań, Greater Poland Voivodeship. It was founded in 1874 and was included on the register of objects of cultural heritage in 1978 as a unique example of a vivarium. The zoo started as a few animals kept by a restaurant owner in the early 1870s. It can thus be considered the oldest continuously operating Polish zoological garden. Together with the New Zoo in Poznań, which opened in 1974, it forms an integral part of the whole complex known as The Zoological Garden in Poznań.

The zoo is a member of both the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria since 1992 and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums since 1999.^[25]

Poznań Fortress, known in German as Festung Posen was a set of fortifications in the city of Poznań in western Poland, built under Prussian rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It represents the third largest system of its kind in Europe.

The first set of fortifications was a tight defensive ring around central Poznań, including the main citadel called Fort Winiary (now the Cytadela park). Construction of these fortifications began in 1828. Later, beginning in 1876, an outer defensive ring was built around the perimeter of the city, consisting chiefly of a series of "forts", which mostly still survive.

The term Festung Posen was also used by the Nazi German occupiers during the Red Army's advance in the closing phases of the Second World War, to refer to Poznań's status as one of the "strongholds" (Festungen) which were to be defended at all costs. It fell in the Battle of Poznań (1945), with Fort Winiary the last point of resistance.^[28]

The Royal-Imperial Route in Poznań is a tourist walk running through the most important parts of the city and presenting the history, culture and identity of Poznań. The Route leads in a westward direction, from The Church of St. John Jerusalem behind the Wall to the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. Florian.

The Royal–Imperial Route in Poznań is an idea of a tourist product that would combine important places and historical monuments of the city. "The Royal – Imperial Route" axis provides cultural, artistic and educational events that integrate the activities of all parties concerned and are the platform for co-operation of various entities: public administration, culture and science institutions, representatives of the academic circle, and tourist organisations. That is why "The Royal–Imperial Route" is Poznań's first complete partner project in which the City Hall motivates the other parties to work for the development of cultural tourism of the city and region.^[29]