Easter is a big family holiday in Poland: palms of dried flowers and willow on Palm Sunday, baskets of eggs and bread blessed on Holy Saturday, and water fights on Wet Monday (śmigus-dyngus). Here's what we checked for the Easter break, from the folk-art fair at the Ethnographic Museum to the hippos at the zoo.
A one-day Easter market at Wrocław's Ethnographic Museum, where folk artists sell their own work: Easter palms, pisanki (decorated eggs), table decorations, tissue-paper flowers and other holiday pieces.
The makers stand at their stalls, so kids can see the work up close and talk to the people who made it. It suits families curious about Polish Easter traditions. It is a shopping fair, not a hands-on workshop.
The Ethnographic Museum, a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław, holds about 20,000 objects from 300 years of village life in Lower Silesia.
The first-floor permanent exhibition shows painted furniture, paintings on glass, wooden beehives carved as human figures, gingerbread molds and regional bonnets. It is a small, quiet museum that suits school-age kids curious about how village families lived and worked.
Poland's oldest zoo covers 32 hectares by Centennial Hall and keeps more than 12,000 animals from over 1,100 species. The headline is the Afrykarium, an indoor oceanarium given over to African wildlife: sharks and rays, Nile crocodiles, hippos, manatees and penguins.
Elsewhere are the Madagascar pavilion, a terrarium and a children's zoo, and a visit mixes indoor halls with outdoor paths.
A mechanical nativity from the second half of the 19th century, carved by Longin Wittig and enlarged by his son Hermann, in a building at the foot of the Wambierzyce Calvary.
Small, colorful wooden figures move through scenes from the Nativity to the Last Supper, the Holy Family at work and the young Jesus in the temple, plus a coal mine and a village dance.
Zielona Dolina is a working family farm in Krzeptów, just west of Wrocław, running since 2000. Visits are booked: school and preschool trips, kids' birthday parties, and summer day camps.
Kids feed goats and sheep, milk Łatka (a lifelike model goat), taste goat's milk, plant beans to take home, and play on a large playground. Covered shelters host picnics, bonfires and grills.
Easter is a big family holiday in Poland: palms of dried flowers and willow on Palm Sunday, baskets of eggs and bread blessed on Holy Saturday, and water fights on Wet Monday (śmigus-dyngus). Here's what we checked for the Easter break, from the folk-art fair at the Ethnographic Museum to the hippos at the zoo.
A one-day Easter market at Wrocław's Ethnographic Museum, where folk artists sell their own work: Easter palms, pisanki (decorated eggs), table decorations, tissue-paper flowers and other holiday pieces.
The makers stand at their stalls, so kids can see the work up close and talk to the people who made it. It suits families curious about Polish Easter traditions. It is a shopping fair, not a hands-on workshop.
The Ethnographic Museum, a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław, holds about 20,000 objects from 300 years of village life in Lower Silesia.
The first-floor permanent exhibition shows painted furniture, paintings on glass, wooden beehives carved as human figures, gingerbread molds and regional bonnets. It is a small, quiet museum that suits school-age kids curious about how village families lived and worked.
Poland's oldest zoo covers 32 hectares by Centennial Hall and keeps more than 12,000 animals from over 1,100 species. The headline is the Afrykarium, an indoor oceanarium given over to African wildlife: sharks and rays, Nile crocodiles, hippos, manatees and penguins.
Elsewhere are the Madagascar pavilion, a terrarium and a children's zoo, and a visit mixes indoor halls with outdoor paths.
A mechanical nativity from the second half of the 19th century, carved by Longin Wittig and enlarged by his son Hermann, in a building at the foot of the Wambierzyce Calvary.
Small, colorful wooden figures move through scenes from the Nativity to the Last Supper, the Holy Family at work and the young Jesus in the temple, plus a coal mine and a village dance.
Zielona Dolina is a working family farm in Krzeptów, just west of Wrocław, running since 2000. Visits are booked: school and preschool trips, kids' birthday parties, and summer day camps.
Kids feed goats and sheep, milk Łatka (a lifelike model goat), taste goat's milk, plant beans to take home, and play on a large playground. Covered shelters host picnics, bonfires and grills.
