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Such towns no longer exist — with a market square around which there is a tavern, shoemaker’s workshop and a shop selling imported foodstuffs and spices, just like in “Sklepy cynamonowe” (“Cinnamon Shops”) by Bruno Schulz, where the heat of the sun fires the imagination. However, it is enough to go to Sanok to see a replica of a typical town of south-eastern Poland from the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. A town where Poles, Jews and Ruthenians (Ukrainians) lived together.

Around the rectangular market square, paved with cobblestones (pebbles from the San River), 29 buildings have been situated. Only two of them, the firehouse and the Jewish house from Ustrzyki Dolne, are the original structures brought here from other locations. The other ones are the replicas of wooden one-storey houses, founded on stone wall bases. Some of them have characteristic arcades, but all of them are covered with shingle roofs. Around the market square there are a tavern with bowling alley, post office, the local authority office, the firehouse, the chemist’s and Jewish houses. A peculiarity that can be found in one of them is a porch with an opening roof, the so-called ‘sukkah’. It served as a place of prayers during the Feast of Tabernacles, i.e. Sukkot. Another carefully reconstructed element is the interior of the house owned by a teacher from Dębowiec, where the geography professor, Stanisław Pawłowski, the later Rector of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, was born. Here, one will also find a residential house from Jaśliska, which is now used as a conference centre, and the building from the old-time school from Stara Wieś, dating back to the end of the 19th century, where an educational centre has been arranged.

For years, museologists from Sanok gathered old appliances and tools that were kept in storerooms together with relevant documentation and photographs. Thanks to the construction of the market square they can now be exhibited again. The museum’s employees, wearing period costumes, use these resources by way of presenting various professions — the carpenter, tailor, shoemaker, watchmaker or photographer. The open-air museum’s offer is also extended by the organisation of fairs (Christmas and Easter ones) and antique sales “Galician Lumber Rooms”, which are enjoying increasing popularity.

The attendance is the measure of success. Prior to the project commencement, the place was visited by 60-90,000 tourists a year, and last year already by over 142,000. It is not a surprise, as the open-
-air museum, comprising nearly 180 facilities, is the largest institution of this type in Poland. As early as in the 1960s, it was assumed that the full image of the cultural landscape of the Podkarpacie region needs to include its three layers: the rural, small-town and nobility-related one. Over the recent years, it has been possible to complete the implementation of these plans. After years of preparations, in September 2011, the Galician Market Square was created.