One of the oldest and best known villages in the region of the Bieszczady Mountains, Myczkowce is a perfect destination if you are seeking peace and quiet. It offers a wide range of accommodation options, a restaurant, bars and cafeterias as well as a water equipment rental. For many tourists, Myczkowce serves as a starting point for treks into the Bieszczady.
Though small, Myczkowce still has some historic monuments. These include an old Greek-Catholic Orthodox Church, built between 1910 and 1912 and which since 1979 has been a Roman-Catholic Church of the Virgin Mary of Czestochowa; a stone granary from the first half of the 17th century as the only remaining building of the manor complex to survive a fire in 1947; and brick roadside shrines dating from the end of the 19th century.
During the summer, you can enjoy a variety of outdoor activities in and around Myczkowce, such as fishing, horse riding and picking mushrooms. One of the local attractions is a miraculous spring with healing water. Winter, of course, brings skiing. The picturesque, wild environs afford an opportunity for you to spot species of animals rarely seen elsewhere in Poland. The bus transport network provides convenient links with towns and villages in the region.
This tourist and agricultural village has a dam and a hydroelectric station, and about 1 km below the dam are the interesting 60m high “Myczkowieckie Rocks”. Numerous species of birds have made their homes in the clefts of the rocks, and from the top of the cliff unfolds a picturesque view of the old riverbed of the San and the area of Myczkowce.
Myczkowce lies in the Subcarpathian Voivodship, some 10 km to the south-east of Lesko and 5 km from Solina. It has a population of almost 500 inhabitants. It is a small village, beautifully situated in the valley of the upper San and in the very heart of the Bieszczady Mountains. A number of streams flow into the San River within the parish of Myczkowce, this river being particularly scenic owing to the high banks between Myczkowce and Zwierzyn. Covering an area of approximately 2 km2, Myczkowieckie Lake is the region’s second largest water body after the Solina Reservoir.
Myczkowce came into existence during the times of the Russian dukes, which makes it one of the oldest villages in the Bieszczady region. The first mention of Miczkowce, as it was then called, dates back to the year 1376. The name ‘Miczkowce’ derives from the word ‘Myczko’, an ancient form of the Polish male name ‘Mikolaj’. It was in 1376 that the starost of Sanok separated the two neighbouring villages of Myczkowce and Terpiczow (present-day Srednia Wies). At the time a private village owned by the nobility, Myczkowce was a property of Olesko (‘Olescho’). The document and the division were confirmed in 1425 with a royal privilege by King Wladyslaw Jagiello.
In 1441 Mikolaj Kmita, castellan of Przemysl, became the new owner of Myczkowce. He twice mortgaged the village as a surety for loans that he made, and his sons did the same in 1449 and 1453. Then came the raid by Jan Kmita from Wisnicz, castellan of Lviv, in 1456 when he seized not only Myczkowce, but also other villages of the key Sobien estate.
There is a record from 1479 stating that at the time Myczkowce had a manor with a farm, meadows, farmlands and a mill. Myczkowce, together with other villages of the Sobien estate, passed into the hands of Stanislaw Kmita, squire of Sobien, in 1488.
In 1491 Myczkowce became the property of new owners, in whose possession it remained for a dozen years or so. Stanislaw Kmita, castellan of Przemysl, gave up Myczkowce as well as two other villages in the area to Duchess Jarochna by the way of sale and exchange. In 1500, however, Kmita regained mortgaged Myczkowce and leased it to a married couple of the gentry, Anna and Marcin Turski. In the years 1496-1499 the village was leased by a nobleman named Andrzej Raclawski. Then, between 1518 and 1519 Myczkowce came into the hands of Piotr and Stanislaw Kmita.
According to a geographic dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slovian countries of 1885, Myczkowce belonged to the Roman-Catholic parish in Uherce, had a wooden Orthodox Church and a brick Greek-Catholic chapel belonging to the parish in Bobrka.
In 1939 the San River became the new border with Germany, and Myczkowce came under Soviet occupation until April 1941.
The 1960s saw the construction of a reservoir, a dam and a hydroelectric power station; these undertakings contributing considerably to the rapid development of Myczkowce.