Busko-Zdrój has regained its image of a real health resort - a spot which uniquely joins strictly medicinal qualities with a space designed to bring out positive emotions. Created by gardener Ignacy Hanusz, the park line linking the town with the spring today is the town’s backbone of sorts. It starts at the town square and ends in a French-style park designed in terms of layout by Enrico Marconi – the author of the Łazienki in Busko.Interestingly, the park is in architectural interdependence with Marconi’s Łazienki structure.
In the southern part of Busko-Zdrój, within the new Zdrój Park, one of the largest and most modern blackthorn graduation towers in Poland has been built.
The stunning structure is a circle with a diameter of 72 m and a circumference of 226 m, with walls reaching almost 10 m high. The graduation tower consists of two rings of blackthorn branches, which are separated by passages resembling a labyrinth. They lead to the courtyard, in the heart of which there is a misting fountain. The courtyard performs additional functions, as its large size makes it possible to organize events and cultural events there. At the top of the tower, there is a viewing terrace from which you can enjoy the beautiful panorama of the spa. Right next door, is the spring house with a mineral water drinking room and a year-round mini-graduation tower. In addition, the building houses an orangery, which tempts visitors not only with its lush vegetation, but also with its exotic climate. Outside
there is a multimedia fountain.
Photo: Busko.pl
The Spa Park in Busko-Zdrój was founded in the 19th century and accompanied the spa from the very beginning of its existence. At its heart was the Łazienki bathhouse (today the Marconi Sanatorium), while the main axis of the space is the Avenue of Dreams, leading to the main gate. Since its inception, the Busko spa park prided itself in the spatial layout reminiscent of the grand palace layouts designed in Poland from the mid-18th century. Its hallmark is the consistently implemented spatial dualism of sorts – a coexistence of a geometric French-style garden with an English-style park, seemingly more chaotic and so closer to nature.
Photo: Busko.pl
Photo: Busko.pl
Busko-Zdrój
Located on the edge of the Spa Park, the Busko Local Cultural Centre is a cultural institution that gathers within its walls a significant part of the artistic and cultural life of the city. The centre is watched over from his bench by a bronze statue of Wojtek Belon, the „Bard of Ponidzie”, the founder of the musical group „Wolna Grupa Bukowina” and a native of Busko. Every spring, a festival named in his honour is organised here, which begins a cycle of the most important events that form the backbone of the cultural calendar of Busko.
As Enrico Marconi was building the Łazienki in Busko in 1836, the Kingdom of Poland had an unremitting love for classicism. The “health temple” of sorts, which Marconi planned on creating in Busko, also had to carry the qualities alluding to the harmony and proportion of ancient structures. Łazienki was also meant to become a “therapeutic agora”, a place of meetings, parties and distinguished balls. The architect combined all these functionalities by creating a universal
structure whose side wings served residential purposes while the main body, reminiscent of an early Christian Roman temple, was divided into an atrium, a resort drinking room and a concert hall, initially a ballroom, where the central nave was a public space, and the side rooms served primarily bathing purposes.
The Buskovian spa architecture flourished in the remembrance of the historic styles which were first present in the resort. The classicist Łazienki or the neo-Gothic style spa chapel serve to show the tradition of this place. Its contemporaneity can be seen in the modern architecture which spatially completes the layout of the spa park, while simultaneously meeting the patients’ expectations. Its functionality connects with tradition and creates a coherent whole. Nearly all of the sanatoriums and spa hospitals are located within the vicinity of the Spa Park. Most of them are situated along the pedestrian walkway along Rzewuskiego and 1 Maja
streets. The first of them seems to spring right out of the slopes of Bycza Góra. This is the Mikołaj sanatorium (1837), named in honour of its founder, Czar Nicholas I (in the Polish spelling ‚Mikołaj”), while further on we pass the Oblęgorek sanatorium (1903) and the more contemporary Zbyszko and Słowacki sanatoriums.