Opole Lubelskie may be a good starting point for tourists who wish to sightsee Lublin Voivodeship. The town is located only 15 km from Kazimierz Dolny, a popular Polish resort, and 50 km from Lublin itself.
Because of its rich history, Opole Lubelskie owns many monuments. The most interesting are: Assumption of Mary baroque church from the second half of the 17th century, a palace built by the Slupecki family from the 15th century, which now is the seat of a secondary school, a town hall from 1750 and inns in Old and New Towns from the 18th and the beginning of 19th centuries.
Worthy a visit is also a neo-gothic cemetery chapel, converted from a classicistic chapel, from 1790. It is Poland’s oldest cemetery (1772) located according to the Enlightenment rules i.e. outside the town. Situated in a close proximity to Opole Lubelskie, a palace in Niezdow is also worth seeing. Built by Aleksander Lubomirski in between 1785 and 1787, it belonged to the Kleniewski family until 1920s. The last owners of the palace were nuns.
Opole Lubelskie is the capital of a county and a commune in Lublin Voivodeship and Chodelska Basin. The town is famous for being a food industry centre. We find here dairies, sweet factories and fruit processing works.
According to the recent data, Opole Lubelskie is populated by 8,739 people.
Opole Lubelskie was at first a community, which later transformed into a town. For many years it was inhabited by people of different religions and nationalities. In the 17th century the town’s owners brought Scottish and German craftsmen to Opole. At the same time, because of the growing number of Jews coming to the town, a synagogue was erected. In the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century Jews constituted already a half of the town’s population. In March 1941 a ghetto was created in Opole. There were more than ten thousand Jews (from the neighbouring villages and towns and from Austria, France and Slovakia) there. A year later they were deported to extermination camps in Belzec and Sobibor. The ghetto was eventually liquidated on October 24, 1942. Also in 1940s Nazis blew up the synagogue and tenements in western frontage of the Old Town.