Poland
Piła city
Piła is a town in northwestern Poland. It had 77,000 inhabitants. It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship (since 1999). Piła is the largest town in the northern part of Great Poland. It is the capital of Piła County. The town is located on the Gwda river and is famous for its green areas, parks and dense forests nearby. It is an important road and railway hub, located at the intersection of two main lines - Poznań - Szczecin and Bydgoszcz - Krzyż Wielkopolski.
Piła is a Polish word meaning "saw". This was a typical name denoting a village of woodcutters belonging to a local noble. The German name Schneidemühl means "sawmill". The great son of our town was Stanisław Staszic (1755-1826) - an outstanding representative of Polish Enlightenment, a priest. His hard work, talents and unselfish willingness to public services made him one of the most influential Poles in that time, which was very difficult one in our national history: time of partitions of Poland. His life motto was "to be useful to the people". His anonymous writing supported movement of the state reforms. After Polish state had collapsed he made a lot of geological researches. Then he organized and developed Polish national educational system, did a lot in scientific and economic branches. His contribution was inestimable. As a human being he always tried to help other people. His grave is in Bielany, Warsaw. His birthplace, a small family house, is in Pila and now it is a museum. A water power plant in Pila, Koszyce, was built in 1937 on the Gwda river in the place of a former water mill. It is of typical modernistic style and it is a model solution for 30-ies years of XX century. Its cuboid body contains a one-aisle machine hall and a two-storey distribution room set on turbine channels. There are two Kaplan system machines from 1937 in the machine hall. The ground dam is 270 metres long and its three span concret dam rises water up to 3,5 metre. One of the places which are worth to visit is Kuźnik nature reserve. Its surface is 96 ha and it area was protected even before the last war. Officially set in 1959 to protect a landscape near Rudnickie lake. Tourists may use some wooden steps to visit a moraine hill westward to the lake and then walk down to the valley of Duży (Big) and Mały (Small) Kuźnik lakes. The slopes are rich with water springs. There is 389 plant species, including very rarely met ground and water ones. The reserve aviafauna is also very rich. The most common trees are pines with addition of birches, oaks and aspens. West to Rudnickie lake there is a stripe of mixed pine and oak tree forest. |