Google Doodle celebrates 85th Anniversary of the Biskupin Settlement Discovery

The Biskupin lake was a popular destination even when the museum did not exist.

Why Google Doodle is celebrating Biskupin Settlement Discovery, one car is already next to the other in the parking lot in the morning. Teenagers, couples, especially families, often with small children, are pouring towards the picket fence.

The museum village is one of the largest, oldest and most popular in Poland. And one with a pretty unusual story. The museum has a modern visitor center with an interesting exhibition on the history of the people who lived here in the Neolithic, Bronze Age and especially the Iron Age.

The Biskupin lake was a popular destination even when the museum did not exist. There, in the summer of 1933, the young teacher Walenty Szwajcer strolled along the shore. It may well be that he was not the first to notice the strange wooden posts sticking out of the water after the water level dropped over time. But he was the first to make the right conclusions, assuming it could be the remains of a prehistoric settlement.

In any case, he passed on his observations to the museum of prehistory and early history in Poznan (Poznan). And the archaeologists there took the young teacher immediately seriously. After looking around Lake Biskupin itself, the excavations soon began.

And what came to light, the science and the public was thrilled, a castle dating from the early Iron Age about 2700 years old and huge.

The archaeologists excavated an area of 2 hectares during their excavations. The entire site of the open-air museum is today 24 hectares.

The discovery was considered a sensation. The "Pompeii of Poland" was soon called Biskupin, after the ancient city near Naples, which was destroyed at the eruption of Vesuvius and rediscovered many centuries later.