The park preserves rare vegetation (marsh orchids, helleborines, the Eurasian baneberry and in the forests the hepatica nobilis and the Turk’s cap lily) and birds in numbers exceeding 160 species. The majority of the park is agricultural – there aren’t many forests as they have been cut down in the early Middle Ages due to intensive settlement. The park’s undeniable treasures are its historical and cultural qualities. The Lake Lednica area is believed to be the cradle of the Polish statehood. Within the Lednicki landscape park there are over 350 archaeological sites, with earliest findings from the Neolithic period.

Lednicki is perhaps Wielkopolska’s most prominent landscape park. From the Poznań-Gniezno route by Lake Lednickie, there is the Wielkopolska Ethnographic Park with an outdoor museum of rural wooden architecture, and on the nearby island (reachable by ferry) there are the excavated remains of the first Polish rulers’ palace from a thousand years ago. At the bottom of the lake (and sometimes still visible) there are the remains of wooden bridges which in the times of Mieszko the First and Bolesław the Brave connected the island with the mainland. The longest of those bridges was 440 meters long. On the other side of the lake in turn, nearby the village of Imiołki, there is the famous Fish Gate a (or the Third Millennium Gate) – the location of the so-called lednickie meetings of many thousands of members of various Catholic communities. A vantage point is situated on the Waliszewskie hill – about mid-way of the length of Lake Lednica.

The Lednicki landscape park is covered with a dense network of hiking and cycling trails. Some of the paths and routes that lead through it are: a fragment of the Camino de Santiago, the Piastowski Trail, or the Trail of the Wooden Churches around Puszcza Zielonka. The cycling trails – including Piastowski Bicycle Route – join up with the international cycling trails – the EuroVelo (E2 and E9). Another attractive hiking opportunity is the 7-kilometer long educational path with 20 stops from Waliszewo via Dziećmiarki and Kamionek.

Text: Jacek Y. Łuczak
Translation: Kaja Kurczewska