Wholly painted village and a fossil town

Zalipie is a village famous for its wonderfully painted cottages. This custom of decorating apartments with floral patterns derives from XIXth century, when the women in Zalipie started to decorate the interiors of their cottages with flowers made of tissue paper, cut-outs, straw spiders and floral patterns painted on the walls. Previously the walls covered with soot used to be lit up with calcareous patterns to avoid a complete darkness made by the smoke getting out of stoves. Later those fair stains were gradually extended to the simple floral patterns usually in the area of a stove, under windows and pictures. Soon those paintings started to cover the whole stoves and walls - even exterior walls of houses and farmsteads.

In Zalipie you will have an opportunity to see both inside and outside of the houses, stables cellars, wells, shrines and kennels. Except the paintings on the walls, a lot of cut-outs used for decorating and also as curtains can be found here. Other adorned things are: pottery, glasses, clothes, wooden accessories.

The most famous artist in the village was Felicja Curyłowa, who is already gone, in whose house there is a museum now. Her paintings cover both the walls of the house and things used in everyday life.

You can’t miss visiting the church in Zalipie which was decorated inside by local artists.

The next worth seeing place is a House of Artists where you can admire different works of local women and also take a part in a workshop in order to get know basic techniques of decorating applied equipment.

There are also available some souvenirs with the most famous paintings such as cups, postcards, spoons, Easter eggs.

Fossil Town, which is an inanimate nature reserve located at the right shore of Biała River near Ciężkowice, was set up in 1931 and has got 15,01 ha.  The reserve takes its beginning from the valley of the Biała River to has its end on the top of the Skała hill. In the mixed forest (mainly an oak with a pine tree) we can find a group of quite big rocks strangely shaped by the erosion. They were named according to their shape: "Cudgel", "Pyramid", "Tower", "Badgers" and "Grunwald" (with a small cave and a commemorative plague as a keepsake of 500th anniversary of the Grunwald battle), "Witch". There is also a small waterfall nearby.

The name of the reserve derives from a local legend which says that these rocks are remains of a fossil town turned into stone because of inhospitality of the citizens or as in another version because of their immorality.

Departure from Cracow: 8:00 a.m.

Return to Cracow: about 6:00 p.m.

Price: 350 PLN

Additional information: the price includes a cost of the journey, entrance charge, cost of participation in the workshops, insurance and a guide.

Bringing customers from and back to the hotel. (Refers to the hotels in Cracow)