Stefan Żeromski Museum in Nałęczów
The Stefan Żeromski Museum was established due to the initiative of Oktawia Żeromska, who donated the summer studio of the writer, together with the garden and the Mausoleum located there, to the Polish nation, with the intended use as a museum. According to the will of the donor, since 17 June 1928, the Museum presents the life and works of the author of The Spring to Come to the visitor for more than 90 years.
The Museum is located in the summer studio of Stefan Żeromski, which was built according to Jan Koszczyc-Witkiewicz’s project in 1905. Constructed in the Zakopane style (with elements of Art Nouveau), the Cottage combines tradition with modern solutions; it was an attempt to introduce an original, local building in a health resort area, dominated at the beginning of the 20th century by Art Nouveau and Swiss style. A single-room studio, the front of which is decorated by bas-reliefs with lily and sunrays motif, was built from pine logs put on the foundation. The wooden structure combined with a shingle roof and a high foundation from split stone is the reason of the Cottage’s beauty. One should note the three half-round windows to the garden, facing East.
The Cottage was a summer studio, a meeting place with friends and the first own home of Stefan Żeromski. In the comfort of wooden walls, the writer finished the novel The Wages of Sin, he created Elegy for a Hetman, Słowo o bandosie (Word about a Peasant), The Rose. The interior is equipped with furniture, images and items previously belonging to Żeromski.
The cottage, that was built for a fee received for Ashes, is surrounded by a garden with impressive old trees. Just at the entrance to the museum, a white poplar grows, in the garden there are numerous plantings, among them beeches, oaks and larches that remember Żeromski. Near the Cottage, one can see a historic well with a reel, a brick bench and the writer’s table.
In the lower part of the garden, one can find the Mausoleum, where the remains of Adam Żeromski, son of Oktawia and Stefan, prematurely deceased for tuberculosis on 30 July 1918, lie. Inside the soaring, conical building, made of limestone, covered with red tile, an altar with Adam’s coffin is located. The tomb chapel, where in 1922 the body of the son of the writer was moved from the cemetery in Bochotnica, was designed Jan Koszczyc-Witkiewicz.
