📜 From a princely fishing village to a Baltic resort
For centuries the Beskid Sądecki was inhabited by the Lemkos — an ethnic group that left behind numerous wooden Orthodox churches, today among the most valuable monuments of the region. The villages at the foot of the mountains lived from shepherding, farming and trade along the Poprad Valley, an important communication route between Lesser Poland and Hungary.
In the 19th century, with the development of shipping and the need to secure the dangerous stretch of coast, a lighthouse was erected here — it was put into operation in 1838. It instantly became the symbol of the village and still serves seafarers to this day. After World War II Beskid Sądecki returned within the borders of Poland and from the 1960s and 1970s onwards it changed shape: in place of fishermen's huts grew guesthouses, holiday cottages and the first resorts, and the sandy beach, forests and proximity of the Baltic attracted family after family.
