Whoever, in days of old, travelled from Kraków towards Hungary would sooner or later find himself in the Sącz Basin – a broad hollow amid the Western Beskids, where two mountain rivers, the Dunajec and the Poprad, meet in a single bed.
In the very fork of those rivers, on a level terrace some three hundred metres above sea level, lies Stary Sącz. To the east it is guarded by a steep escarpment above the Poprad, to the north by a gentler slope down to the Dunajec, and to the west it is overlooked by Miejska Góra, the Town Hill, at whose foot murmurs the Moszczenicki stream.
A land between two rivers
The old Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland described the town as standing on a “dome-shaped hill” 321 metres high, at the northern end of the wooded ridge that divides the two rivers.
Other sources give 300 or 320 metres – and there is no contradiction in this, for some measured the terrace and others the market square on the hilltop. So too with Miejska Góra: the town atlas gives about 400 metres, more recent sources 420.
It is a fertile land, for here lie mountain alluvial soils brought down by the rivers. The rivers, however, can be capricious: in the rainy season they swell and burst their banks, in drought they shrink to mere brooks.
The hills around the basin rise roughly a hundred and fifty metres above its floor, so that the town seems to rest in the palm of a hand.
The valleys of the Dunajec and the Poprad have served since time immemorial as natural corridors through the Carpathians. Along them ran the roads to and from Hungary – and that explains why an early centre grew up precisely here, in the borderland.
At the hillfort in Naszacowice archaeologists have found objects from the Avar, Great Moravian and Old Hungarian worlds, witnesses to trans-Carpathian routes older than the 11th century.
The first written mention of trade dates from the year 1273: it speaks of burghers floating grain down the river. From the early 14th century at the latest, copper and cloth flowed this way from Hungary, while cattle, horses and pigs went in the other direction.
The land of Sącz, as the Middle Ages understood it, at first took in only the basin and its surroundings. In time, however, as the primeval forests were cleared, it grew to reach the Biała in the east, the Gorce and the Nowy Targ Basin in the west, the Beskid ridges in the south, and the hills between Tropie and Czchów in the north.
Eugeniusz Pawłowski reckoned the Sącz region at more than 2,200 square kilometres, with 265 villages and 7 towns.
Whence came Sącz
The town’s name is possessive – that is, it tells us whose it was. The original form was Sądecz, from the personal name Sądek or Sądko, with an ancient suffix.
In the inflected form “do Sądcza” (“to Sącz”) the awkward cluster of sounds was simplified to “do Sącza”, until at last the nominative too was levelled to “Sącz”. The adjective “sądecki”, however, kept the old “d”, like a fossil in stone.
Who was this Sądek? No one knows. Pawłowski wrote plainly that the founder of the oldest stronghold bore that name, and that nothing more is known of him.
In the documents the name appears in Latin dress: Sandech in 1224, Sandecz in 1243, Sandec in 1251, Sandecz and Zandech in 1252.
The epithet “Stary” (“Old”) came later, once Nowy Sącz (“New Sącz”) had grown up nearby. As early as 1299 the parish priest Jakub styled himself plebanus de Antiqua Civitate – parish priest of the Old Town – and in 1437 we meet antiqua civitas Sandecz. In the 15th century it was also called simply the Old Town.
Why Stary Sącz matters
Three things set this town apart from the other strongholds and little towns of the Sącz region.
First, it was the first town of the castellany of Sącz – the elder brother of Nowy Sącz.
Second, for five centuries it remained a private ecclesiastical town: its lady was the abbess of the convent of the Poor Clares, which “for centuries acted as the owner of the town”.
Third and last, it is the sanctuary of St Kinga, canonised here in 1999 and, since 2016, the town’s patron saint.
Today the commune of Stary Sącz, in Nowy Sącz County, covers 102.41 square kilometres and numbers 15 village districts (sołectwa), while forests cover nearly half its area – 45.63 per cent.
And why Bryjów?
Finally, a word about the name this website bears. “Bryjów” is not an old name of the town, and you will not find it in any medieval document.
It is a teasing nickname, taken from bryjka – a humble, filling soup of wholemeal flour – and the townsfolk were accordingly called Bryjowiaks. We tell the whole story separately: Why Bryjów?