The text mentions the architectural monuments located on the territory of Krzemieniec, Wiśniowiec and Poczajów. The history of these places and their links with Polish culture are briefly outlined. The ruins of the Krzemieniec castle and old Polish manor houses are mentioned. The text is also accompanied by several photographs (Source: "Ziemia. Tygodnik Krajoznawczy Ilustrowany' Warsaw 1926, no. 7, pp. 2-5, after: Wielkopolska Biblioteka Cyfrowa).

A modernised reading of the text

Architectural monuments in Krzemieniec, Wiśniowiec and Poczajów

If we are to present a picture, however sketched, of Polish art in Krzemieniec, we need to realise at the very outset what the name of Bona's mountain and the name of Bona's castle mean... For there is an established conviction, which unfortunately is not only widespread in our country but also very deeply rooted, that Krzemieniec began its life's significance only with Bona, and that it was only Italian art which gave direction to the monuments of Wallachian Athens. In the face of the historical truth, Bona's castles are just an accumulation of blind repetition, without the slightest basis - so we should stop calling the mountain by Bona's name, because it is actually Krzemieniec as Kamieniec was.

There was the mountain of Krzemieniec and the castle of Krzemieniec going back an immeasurably long time. Originally, therefore, it was said that the Chercha Mountain and the Krzemieniec Mountain were like the remnants of Miodobory, stretching from Smotrycz Podolski, through Olejko and Podhorce. It was an ancient stronghold, coming into history in 1064, as the property of Bolesław the Brave. Who knows if a castle did not already stand here at that time. Its defensive qualities must have been outstanding, because during the Tartar attack in 1240, all the castles in Podolia and Volhynia fell, and there were already many of them - only the castle in Krzemieniec survived completely. This circumstance alone is very telling, as we can see that there were very fortified castles in Poland a hundred years before Casimir the Great, and that the castles, built on high mountains and separated by precipices and gorges, offered almost complete security.

During the reign of Sigismund I, Duke Janusz, Bishop of Vilnius, had a huge and deep well forged in the castle rock. At that time there were already three main towers, to which, probably on the site of the original one, Bishop Janusz had foundations dug for a new tower, thus a fourth one. One tower had the name Czerleno. The biggest and highest tower was the one above the gate, in front of which there was a drawbridge on chains, the bigger bridge. In addition, we know that there was a second, smaller bridge with a hastion, in which there was a chapel above the gate, where the bishop celebrated mass. There were dozens of so-called "horods", i.e. little gardens by the castle wall, and each belonged to a village and a manor, which defended them in times of need. These few descriptions already show that the Krzemieniec castle had all the features most important for a Polish castle, namely four towers, two gates and two drawbridges, a chapel above one of the gates in the tower and many smaller towers around the fortified wall.

It was in fact a Polish castle with four towers, the most common in Poland, and only later called Bona's castle simply because of the blind repetition of what we are taught by foreigners. Bona's castle most appropriately immortalises the memory of a thief who left in Poland memories rather worthy of forgetting. We should speak of the mountain Krzemieniec and the castle Krzemieniec. It was not until 1648 that Krzywonos captured both the town and the castle. He burnt and destroyed everything, even the whole area, and had the nobility's papers and parchments thrown down a well. This is how the memory of the past disappeared. Of course, the Krzemieniec castle, as a monument of Polish art, demands attention to its importance, if only because it is the oldest monument in Krzemieniec. The stories about the suspension bridges, which take us back to fairy-tale times, are also connected with the underground porches which used to come out from the middle of the castle and serve as escape or escape porches. They were also referred to as "listening porches" for keeping track of the enemy. Traces of such escape porches and listening porches, the so-called listening posts, can be seen in one of the gardens under the castle hill itself. There are two vaults made of wild stones, quite large, as if cellars, in the depths of which are the outlets of two porches, also vaulted and disappearing in the darkness far away.

Collapsed by boulders, they do not permit further investigation for the time being, but it would be desirable for science that a skilful investigation should one day be carried out here. Who knows whether it will not one day turn out that these excavations are testimonies to the high medieval art, thanks to which in some places in our country such earthworks were able to be performed with a strange proficiency, in mile-long lengths, and under the waters of rivers or ponds. We read in the description of the 1552 inspection that the castle had:

"The bridges' keystones on iron chains, and the bridge in front of the gate on the crosscut was 44 fathoms long and 3 fathoms wide, the inner circumference of the castle 73.5 long, 33 fathoms wide. The castle had a church of St. Nicholas, built by Gabriel Denyskevich, with a painting of the Transfiguration, a silver-gilt cross and a silver-bound gospel".

As if it was important to discover the walls, which so far probably existed in the ground, to give the horizontal projection of the church. Perhaps the excavations on this occasion also brought to mind remarks again testifying to the antiquity of the monument. Not only the castle, but also the town was built earlier than the parchments. The very founding of it in a cross, according to the Slavic "mrra", says it bluntly. Here are four formerly only ramparts and trenches, because in Poland the rivers and lakes themselves were always exploited for this purpose with the art of engineering.

Moving away from the city centre in either direction, we are struck by views of manor houses, so graceful in their lines and colours that it makes the heart grow fonder. One is reminded of times not so long ago, when the floors of the entrance porches would invite the visitor with calamus shaken together with the greenery, and the scent of marjoram and cloves, which were sprinkled on the floors of the common rooms and parlours, would waft from the interior of the quiet cottage. The infinite variety of solutions and designs in the arrangement of posts and pillars, roofs and canopies, interesting purely native shapes in general and in detail, as well as a mysterious charm radiating from an enchanted spirit - this is the infinite value of the buildings of the Krzemieniec manor houses. They are an endless source of learning and will always delight you with something new. We encourage architects, painters, lovers of beauty and even Polish craftsmen to look at and study the Krzemieniec manor houses, enchanted as if by a magic wand of dormant Beauty.

The Wiśniowiec castle is related to the Krzemieniec castle already in the fact that it is again one of the links of the chain stretched out here in the east for the defence of the Polish state and has been so since ancient times. Whoever remembers the old descriptions of the Wiśniowiecki castle today will be surprised by the references to the glory and fame of the House of Mniszech in the times of Charlemagne and Emperor Otto. This may be true, all the more so because the past of the entire Wiśniowiec breathes a kind of glow from every corner and from every object.

Take a walk through old Wiśniowiec and at first glance you will be struck by the wide street, lined with old-Polish houses and manor houses, which give the impression of a whole not yet spoilt by new and recent developments. It is a specimen of an old street with fences we no longer even know about. And how many houses and manor houses in Novy Vishnevets have such a self-contained and homely appearance that one can marvel here. All these are the voices of centuries probably much older than we think. This land is connected to a deep past.

Nearby is Poczajów, famous above all for the beauty of its location and surroundings. A place sacred for centuries, wrongly attached today only to the image of an Orthodox church. As the Ussupinska Lavra it must have existed from time immemorial, especially as here, as on Lysogora, Jasna Gora, there was a temple, probably in pagan times, connected with an underground cavern. In the latter there are traces of a foot imprinted on the rock, traces of the foot of the N. In the latter there are traces of a footprint on a rock, traces of the foot of the Virgin Mary, so often appearing in Poland: in Piasek in Kraków, in Podkamień near here, there are stories similar in content.

The monastery and church, founded on the land of the nobility, carried on age-old traditions into later times, when the Orthodox took over from the Basilians under Tsarist rule. Today, the monastery itself is an upper town, at the foot of which lies a town once again filled with houses and mansions of truly monumental appearance. Almost every major building is a model of the elements of Polish architecture. Poczajów and Wiśniowiec are treasure troves which demand that we urgently transfer these mementoes of forgotten times to our books on Polish art, before all of this disappears from sight and before we say that a wise Pole is only wise after the event. Of the small-town Polish houses of Wiśniowiec and Poczajów, the most important are those with arcades gracefully set on pillars.

These pillars - either wooden or brick, sometimes even stone - what a charming specimen of design and shape, what a wealth and variety there is. One cannot help wondering why we Poles are always more inclined to dwell on the monuments of Rome and Corinth than to grasp the peculiarities of our own, which strike our eyes every step of the way. Things there are already so well known and so widely circulated that they really do bore the Polish ear - while things native to Poland lie fallow and play the role of hidden treasures guarded by the power of evil, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the appointed.