Niemczówka - Museum Chamber of Pan Wołodyjowski in Chęciny

Description

One of the most interesting tourist information offices in the Świętokrzyski region. You should start your sightseeing of the administrative district Chęciny in Niemczówka, where the kind staff will propose the best touring route to you. Since May they are also inviting you to see the Museum Chamber of Pan Wołodyjowski.

The idea of creating this chamber appeared before the 50th anniversary of filming the last part of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Trilogy”. Many scenes from “Pan Wołodyjowski '' were filmed in Chęciny, next to the ruins of Chęciny Castle, where the crew built a mock-up castle from Kamieniec Podolski. Other created for the production constructs include Raszków town and Chrepti’s fortification. The most important batalistic scenes were filmed here. Almost three thousand extras played in those scenes, and some of them were the citizens of the administrative district Chęciny. Another important scene filmed here was the death of mister Michał, who was played by Tadeusz Łomnicki.

In the autumn of 2019 we organized a collection of memorabilia connected with the production of Pan Wołodyjowski (dir. Jerzy Hoffman). It allowed us to collect most of the exposition - mostly old pictures and photographs. Additionally, the anniversary became an amazing opportunity for the actors that were invited for it, to leave something behind too. Right now their memorabilia are also presented in the exposition.

The Chamber was created for a few reasons. Firstly, it was to commemorate an unusual event in the history of our town, the filming of “Pan Wołodyjowski”.  The passage of time can make the memories unintelligible, which makes them disappear forever. We have decided that it is a good enough reason to collect them, both as oral stories and as photographs taken by the citizens of the town. They are put on an exposition, so that tourists can see the behind the scenes of the production process. In this way we can show them to the public and they can still live in some way, in the people’s memories.

The chamber is divided by topics. The first room is made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the movie “Pan Wołodyjowski” celebrated on the 14th November of 2019 in the “Pod Basztami” Hall. Throughout this event, the actors that took part in the production of this important piece of culture - Magdalena Zawadzka, Daniel Olbrychski and Jan Nowicki were telling stories about their memories of Chęciny. There are also handprints of these guests, made during the ceremony. The second room takes us back to the times of the production of this movie, so to the year 1968. Here, you can see the sentimental pictures we mentioned before, as well as replicas of the costumes of the main characters, and props. There are also structural elements of the mock-up of Kamieniec Podolski, which was created for the film on a hill near today's Chęciny fortress. The third room refers to the above-mentioned objects, presenting their appearance in a wider perspective, and in the center of the room there is a model of the Royal Castle in Chęciny from the Waza era, built last year.

We also encourage tourists visiting the Royal Castle in Chęciny to come to the historic tenement house "Niemczówka '' located in Chęciny at ul. Małogoska 7. In addition to its rich, sixteenth-century history and numerous historic elements (a ceiling beam from the seventeenth century, sandstone framing, mezuzahs), it now has an additional attraction for visitors - the Museum Chamber of Pan Wołodyjowski.  The attractive price offer of the combined ticket, which includes the possibility of visiting the Castle and the Tenement House, also encourages you to come. We want to permanently connect these objects with each other, creating a close symbiosis of two unique monuments of Chęciny.

If you’re curious about what Chęciny looked like tens of years ago, the exhibition on the courtyard of “Niemczówka” is the place to go. There are eleven photographs, each of them over one meter tall. This amazing exhibition shows old Chęciny. It is a real trip back in time. What did Chęciny look like tens of years ago? You can see that for yourself by visiting the exhibition “Chęciny in old photographs”, that has just been opened for tourists in the courtyard of “Niemczówka”. Photo gallery of old Chęciny can be found in the courtyard of the renaissance “Niemczówka”. It’s open every day between 10.00 and 18.00.