One journey. Four ways to experience it. READ · WATCH · VIEW · LISTEN
Szczawnica: A Town Held by Mountains
Szczawnica: A Town Held by Mountains follows four days in the Pieniny — fountains and timber pavilions in a spa town built on water, a chairlift climbing into the hills above Palenica, and a raft carried by hand along the Dunajec beneath the Three Crowns.
The Road In
Szczawnica sits close enough to reach without much ceremony — down from Czechowice-Dziedzice, the roads narrowing as the Pieniny closed in from both sides. Four days were all we’d allowed ourselves, which felt, by the second evening, like both exactly enough and nowhere near enough.
A Town Built on Water
Szczawnica has been a spa town since the nineteenth century, and it still moves like one. Fountains break the pavement at every second corner — some tucked into quiet courtyards, others centrepieces of the main promenade, water rising and falling in slow, unhurried rhythm. The timber pavilions along the walking paths carry that same unhurried air: painted facades, carved eaves, the kind of architecture built for people with nowhere urgent to be.
A mural on one of the side streets traces the town’s own memory — the Szalay brothers, credited with founding the resort, painted alongside scenes of the spa’s early decades, a timeline held on a single wall. Further along, a trail of bronze figures sits half-hidden among the trees, seated and watching, easy to miss and strange to find. And more than once a horse-drawn carriage passed us on the cobbles, unhurried as everything else here, as if the town had simply decided that some things shouldn’t be rushed even now.
Palenica
Above the town, a chairlift climbs to Palenica, and it’s worth taking simply for what happens on the way up — the spa buildings shrinking below, the valley opening out, ridge after ridge of the Pieniny stacking into the distance. At the top, the view earns the climb outright: a long, layered sweep of forest and peak, with Szczawnica itself reduced to rooftops in the fold of the valley. We stood at the railing longer than we needed to, which is usually the sign a place has done its job.
The Dunajec
The real centrepiece of the four days was the river. Traditional wooden rafts leave from a small pier below the town, poled by flisak raftsmen in folk waistcoats and wide-brimmed hats — a trade handed down, by all accounts, over generations rather than trained for a season.
The Dunajec here moves slowly enough to feel safe and fast enough to feel like something is actually happening, and it carries you directly beneath the Three Crowns — pale limestone cliffs rising sheer out of the forest, the kind of landmark that looks staged until you’re underneath it. Herons and gulls worked the shallows as we passed. Nobody on the raft seemed to feel any need to talk.
Evenings
What the days gave to the river, the evenings gave back in colour. Each night closed with the sun dropping directly into the saddle of the ridge above the town, the sky running from gold through amber into a deep, settling blue, the valley disappearing into shadow beneath it while the peaks held the last of the light. It’s the kind of sunset that makes you stop mid-sentence, and we did, more than once.
Some places don’t so much end a visit as postpone it.
The Gallery
The full set from those four days is gathered in one place — spa town and sculpture trail, chairlift and viewpoint, raft and gorge, and the light at the end of both days. Szczawnica: A Town Held by Mountains →
The Video
The Dunajec is best experienced at the river’s own pace. Drifting beneath the Three Crowns on a traditional wooden raft, the noise of everyday life simply falls away. This short film captures that journey through the Pieniny Mountains, accompanied by my original instrumental, Where the River Takes Us.
The Music
Where the River Takes Us — a track for the raft beneath the Three Crowns, where the Dunajec did the deciding.