Moving from little Belluno to Venice – was this a necessity for an ambitious painter of the Baroque era? Especially if we take into account the fact that his father was a local painter who used to paint the folds of cloaks worn by saints. Dolabella ended up in the workshop of Antonio Vassilacchi and…
After the coronation of Jagiełło, Jadwiga was still formally King, and not just the wife of the monarch. As she matured, she increasingly often took the initiative in matters of the state and, in the final years of her life, was an independent politician, able to effectively negotiate with neighbours and set them tough conditions….
Potatoes are among the most popular crops in the world. They were brought from America to Europe following the expeditions of Christopher Columbus, but they did not appear on tables until the 18th century. This was the same time that they also came to Poland, and poor peasant families played a surprisingly important role here….
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the heart of the continent was one of the largest and most diverse European countries of the early modern age (16th-18th centuries), including the territories belonging nowadays to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine, as well as scraps of Russia and Estonia. The Commonwealth was created as a result of the…
“This world is arranged in such a dreadful way that not even the most tender sighs can replace statistics…” observed Bolesław Prus, one of Poland’s greatest writers. The author of the novel Lalka knew what he was writing about, as his income from literature was supplemented by working in a statistics office set up by…
Military victories will always hold a prominent place in the collective memory. This in part is due to their nature. When an enemy invades our country, the efforts the political community is forced to take is an existential challenge. The alternative, a defeat, would mean the deaths of many people and the country’s loss of…
