Lubelskie

The third largest Voivodship in Poland lies along the eastern borderlands of the country. Its neighbours are Belarus and the Ukraine, across the Bug River, a wild and twisting river. This is the area where Polish and Russian, Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish influences are all mixed together. It is a land which has seen many changes. A full-blooded borderland.

The Catholic sanctuary in Kodeń (famous for its miraculous painting of the Madonna de Guadalupe stolen by Mikołaj Sapieha, from the Pope himself) lies close to the Orthodox Monastery in Jabłeczna and the Greek-Catholic churches.

The Lubelskie Voivodship is the birthplace of many Jewish wise men; this is where the families of the greatest Jewish writers originated: Izrael Joszua and Isaac Bashevis Singer. It has also been the place of the Holocaust and today the German concentration camps in Majdanek and Sobibór have been turned into museums as a reminder of those terrible days.

The capital of the Voivodship – Lublin is the largest town in eastern Poland, this vibrant academic center (12 universities) and a historical settlement contains one of the largest European treasures in the St Trinitary Chapel in the castle; a Gothic vault embellished with unique Byzantine-Rus frescos.