Situated on the Bohemian River, Khmelnytskyi (ukr. Хмільник) is one of the oldest urban centres in Podolia, whose history has been intertwined with that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for centuries. The village was first mentioned in the 15th century, and already in the 16th century Chmielnik was a significant royal town in the Braclaw province. In 1564 it was granted Magdeburg city rights. Situated on the trade route connecting Kyiv with Braclaw and Kamieniec Podolski, it developed as a centre of crafts and trade, as well as a local starosty seat.

However, the town's history was marked by frequent invasions and destruction. In the 17th century, Chmielnik repeatedly fell victim to Cossack and Turkish wars, and its population was devastated and dispersed. In the 18th century, after reconstruction, it again became an important landowning and religious centre of the region, bringing together Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews. After the Second Partition of Poland, the town became part of the Russian Empire and, after the 1917 Revolution, part of Soviet Ukraine.

Today's Chmielnik is a small spa town famous for its radon waters, but there are still traces of the old Polish presence in its landscape: the Baroque Holy Trinity Church , traces of the former Catholic cemetery , and plaques dedicated to Ignacy Jan Paderewski , which remind us that it was here - in this small Podolia town - that the history of one of the most eminent Poles began.

The first Catholic parish in Chmielnik already existed in 1603, but its wooden church was destroyed by the Turks in the 17th century. The present brick church was built in 1728 in the Tuscan Baroque style and consecrated ten years later by Bishop Franciszek Kobelski. The church was renovated several times - in the 19th century and after World War II. During Soviet times it was turned into a warehouse, after which it was returned to the faithful. Today, diocesan priests and sisters from the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary minister there.

On the wall of the church, there are two plaques dedicated to Ignacy Jan Paderewski : the first one from 2010 commemorates his birth in nearby Kuryłówka and the second one from 2011 commemorates his baptism, which took place in this very church.

The cemetery , located in the southern part of the town, is also a trace of the former Catholic community. Currently closed, dilapidated and overgrown, it still hides fragments of ancient monuments - marble slabs, obelisks, crosses and the ruins of a chapel. As Zbigniew Hauser wrote in the 1990s, only a dozen or so inscriptions could be read, the oldest dating back to 1841. Prominent among the surviving gravestones is that of Count Adolf Mostowski (d. 1904) , a landowner, writer, poet and painter. An unnamed monument with a rhymed inscription bears the signature of the stonemason H. Oleszkiewicz from Zhytomyr.

The preserved elements of the cemetery testify to the high artistic culture of the former inhabitants of Chmielnik, and at the same time to the richness and diversity of Polish heritage in Podolia.

Catalogue of objects