Brama Grodzka

The Grodzka Gate stands at the eastern edge of Lublin's Old Town, on the line that once separated the Christian city from the Jewish quarter below it. For that reason it has long been known as the Jewish Gate. It was one of the first stone parts of the town walls, built in 1342 under Casimir the Great, and it was reshaped in a lighter Classicist form late in the 18th century. Today it houses a cultural centre that keeps the memory of Lublin's lost Jewish community.

The gate is both a monument and a working archive. Walk through it and you cross from the surviving Old Town into the empty ground where the Jewish district stood until the Second World War. The centre inside, the Grodzka Gate NN Theatre, has gathered thousands of hours of recorded memories, photographs and documents about the people who lived here. It is the best single place in the city to understand what was lost and why the streets below the gate are now roads and open space.

The gate went up in 1342 as part of the fortifications ordered by Casimir the Great. It marked the passage between the walled Christian town and the Jewish quarter that grew up around the castle hill. At the end of the 18th century it was rebuilt in its present form. In the interwar years the district below it was one of the most important Jewish centres in Poland. During the German occupation the community was destroyed and much of the quarter was later flattened, leaving the gate as a threshold onto absence.

The centre runs exhibitions inside the gate and the adjoining rooms, built around its archive of testimony and old photographs of the vanished streets. It also organises walks, readings and the annual commemorations tied to the district's history. Check the centre's own channels for current opening times and programme before you go, as these change with the season and with events.

The gate sits within the Old Town, a short flat walk from the market square and the Trybunal. From the Krakow Gate at the other end of the Old Town it is a few minutes on foot through the lanes. For orientation and transport across the city, see the Lublin guide.

The gate opens onto the older, quieter parts of the centre:

• The Old Town, with the market square and painted facades just above the gate.
• Lublin Castle, across the dip where the Jewish quarter once stood.
• The Krakow Gate, at the far, western end of the Old Town.

Because it was the passage between the Christian Old Town above and the Jewish quarter below. The two districts met at this point, and the gate became the everyday link between them.

It is the cultural centre based in the gate. It grew out of a theatre group formed in 1990 and now works mainly as an archive and memory project for Lublin's Jewish history, running exhibitions, walks and recordings.