WINNICE I DOMKI WINIARSKIE W KRAJOBRAZIE KULTUROWYM ZIELONEJ GÓRY

The area around Zielona Góra is regarded as the most northerly wine making region in the world. The development of vine cultivation was determined by an exceptionally favourable climate and a hilly terrain, specially its sunny southern slopes. The tradition of vine growing in Zielona Góra goes back to the Middle Ages and is confirmed by a note from 1314. At the end of the nineteenth century vine cultivation started to decline, a process which went on in the following century. The area of the vineyards dropped considerably from 1400 hectares during the 1860s to a mere 110 hectares in 1937. The last local wine producer went bankrupt at the end of 1990s. Today, wine production in Zielona Góra is being revived thanks to the initiative of associations created by numerous growers, planning new vineyards in the region of the town. An inseparable element of the landscape of Zielona Góra were wineshops built on the plantations. The first such objects appeared in the eighteenth century as typically utilitarian wooden sheds and bowers. Brick houses were erected in the nineteenth century, and in 1865 they totalled 697. Residential and farm buildings, frequently featuring original architecture, survived to the early twentieth century. Today only several examples are extant. The house on 'Winne Wzgórze' is a brick edifice from 1818, surrounded by a vineyard and at present encircled with a glassed-in construction - the Palm House, which functions as a cafe. Several other objects, ensconced among contemporary city buildings, come from the first half of the nineteenth century. Unique objects include the so-called wineshop tower from Budachow (today: in the ethnographic Skansen in Ochla near Zielona Góra). The eighteenth- century two-storey building with an attic is covered by means of a hip roof. A chapel whose history dates back to 1314 was raised to commemorate the victims of a plague epidemic which took the lives of 700 residents of the 'town of wine'. During the nineteenth century the chapel fulfilled the function of a wineshop. The landscape of Zielona Góra no longer features so-called 'naboty' - charming buildings erected on a regular polygonal ground plan and covered with a roof resembling a dome. The major part of the outfitting of the houses, including tools used for growing vine and equipment for the processing of the fruit, has also not been preserved. Scarce surviving examples can be seen at permanent exhibitions held by the Lubuska Land Museum and the Ethnographic Museum in Ochla.