Exhibition in the Olender Ethnographic Park

The Olêder Ethnographic Park in Wielka Nieszawka is the first open-air museum in Poland dedicated to the Olêder settlement, which developed from the 16th century. Initially, they were settlers from the Netherlands and Friesland - members of the Protestant Mennonite group, who could freely profess their faith in the tolerant Kingdom of Poland. They settled floodplains and wastelands from the Zulawy up the Vistula to Toruń and on to Mazovia. Over time, the term olender/olêder began to be used to refer to other settlers - Germans (Lutherans), as well as Poles (Catholics), who enjoyed privileges based on the legal system originally introduced for settlers from the Netherlands.

The main purpose of establishing the park is to recreate a fragment of the cultural landscape of the Vistula River village at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. On an area of more than 5 hectares, an Olêder village with the most characteristic layout, the so-called swamp row, was reconstructed. There are 3 complete homesteads consisting of 6 historic residential and farm buildings and a cemetery. They were moved from the Lower Vistula Valley area and date from the 18th and 19th centuries. These buildings are the most valuable surviving examples of architecture characteristic of the Olender settlers. They are surrounded by cultivated fields, meadows, gardens and orchards. The road connecting the individual homesteads has been planted with fruit trees, the drainage ditches with willows and the individual homesteads with high vegetation.