Metravel city quest
City Zakopane: free walking route “quest: Giewont’s sleeping knights” along the sights. 8 points. Approximately 3 h 20 min. Quests and legends - straight from
A knight lies above Zakopane. Look south and you can see him: viewed from the north, Giewont's massif resembles a warrior asleep on his back. Great Giewont is his head, Long Giewont his body beneath stone armour.
The Górals, the highlanders, will tell you this is more than silhouettes. An enchanted army sleeps in caves inside the mountain, armoured knights lying in neat rows, horses beside stone mangers. A blacksmith named Kuba once lived in Kościelisko. One night an old man came asking him to shoe several hundred horses. He led Kuba into the mountains and raised his head. Thunder sounded, a rock block moved aside and Kuba saw the whole sleeping army in full armour. Legend says the knights will wake and fight when Poland faces its greatest danger. Until then, they sleep. Their greatest guarded treasure is freedom rather than gold.
Today you will cross Zakopane south to north, from the giant ski jump to a panoramic hill, past the people who invented the town: a doctor bringing patients for the climate, a storyteller whose tales were recorded word for word and an artist inventing an entire architectural style. Follow the main street, where the knight appears between shop windows, to the wooden church whose parishioners achieved something almost impossible on the knight's ‘head’, then up Gubałówka to see the whole sleeping army.
The route is around four kilometres through town plus the ascent of Gubałówka, by funicular or on foot. We start below Wielka Krokiew, the large ski jump visible from afar, with parking nearby.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
We begin with Zakopane's newest ‘giant’, its only man-made one. Wielka Krokiew, Poland's largest ski jump, opened in March 1925.
Head down towards town from Krokiew. At the junction by John Paul II roundabout stands a monument to two people without whom there might be no Krupówki, resort or even ‘Zakopane’ on European maps.
From the monument, head to Krupówki, a kilometre-long pedestrian river and Zakopane's main street. Once a road from the village to the Kuźnice ironworks, it was named after the Krupa family's clearing and designated a street in the 1870s.
In a small square beside Krupówki, a bust of Władysław Jagiełło stands on a stone column. A boy in highlander dress sits at its base.
Turn west from Krupówki onto Kościeliska Street. It brings you to Zakopane's oldest church, a small larch building of 1847 beneath a shingled roof, built by carpenter Sebastian Gąsienica-Sobczak.
Immediately behind the church, beyond a stone enclosure with gates designed by Witkiewicz, is Poland's most unusual cemetery. Pęksowy Brzyzek, with brzyzek meaning a bluff above a stream in the highlanders' dialect, was founded in 1848 on land donated by Jan Pęksa.
A little further along Kościeliska stands the house that began an entire national style. Villa Koliba was built in 1892–93 to Stanisław Witkiewicz's design.
The finale is above you. Return along Kościeliska to the market at Gubałówka's foot.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.