Podlachia
Discover Podlachia
Introduction
Podlachia is the north-eastern corner of Poland, on the Belarusian border, and it is the emptiest, wildest and most mixed part of the country. Poles, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Tatars have all lived here, and the result is Catholic churches, Orthodox churches with onion domes, and two wooden mosques at Kruszyniany and Bohoniki built by Tatar cavalry settled here in the seventeenth century, whose descendants still use them.
The region’s great distinction is Białowieża, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the last substantial fragment of the primeval lowland forest that once covered the whole of northern Europe. Parts of it have never been logged, the deadwood is left where it falls, and it holds the largest free-living population of European bison in the world — a species that was extinct in the wild by 1927 and was brought back from zoo animals.
North and west of the forest lie the Biebrza marshes, the largest natural wetland in central Europe and one of the best birdwatching sites on the continent, with aquatic warblers, cranes and elk. The Narew river braids through a second wetland park nearby. Białystok is the regional city. Winters here are the coldest in Poland; spring migration in April and May is the reason most visitors come.