Tarnogóra
Historical Towns and Villages
A large village located on the left bank of the Wieprz, it was founded by Hetman Jan Tarnowski as a town, which it remained between 1548 and 1869. In the vicinity, but on the other right-hand side of the river, there is the village of Izbica, which grew as a trading settlement, inhabited mainly by Jews. In 1750, the starost (a county governor) of Tarnogóra, Antoni Granowski granted municipal rights to Izbica, which were lost, as it was the case with Tarnogóra, after the January Uprising.
Izbica retained the layout of a former trading settlement with architecture from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, while Tarnogóra surprises its visitors with a beautiful palace-and-park complex from 1830-1840, built by Gen. Józef Czyżewski. This romantic palace, single-storey at the front and two-storey where it faces the garden, with a cylindrical tower covered by a high conical roof, combines different architectural styles – classicism, neo-Gothic and even elements of oriental architecture. The second historical building in the village is the parish church of St. Sophia from 1544, founded by Hetman Tarnowski. Quite peculiar in its architecture, it lost its original Renaissance features during the 18th and 19th century redevelopment.
