Białystok Audioguides

Ludwik Lazarz Zamenhof was born in Bialystok in 1859, in a city where Polish, Russian, German, Jewish, and Belarusian communities lived in proximity but rarely spoke each other's languages. The friction he witnessed as a child persuaded him that a neutral common language might reduce human conflict, and in 1887 he published the first Esperanto grammar under the pen name 'Doctor Esperanto' (meaning 'one who hopes'). His birthplace on Ulica Zielona is marked by a plaque, and the town hall hosts exhibits on the movement he created.

Before the Second World War, Bialystok was one of the most ethnically complex cities in Poland, with Jews comprising as much as 70 percent of the population in the early 20th century, alongside Polish Catholics, Russian Orthodox, and Tatar Muslim communities.

The city's most striking building, the Branicki Palace on Ulica Bialostoczanska, was built for Jan Klemens Branicki in the early 18th century as a residence meant to rival Versailles. Its formal French gardens and white Baroque facade represent the period when Branicki's patronage transformed the city. The Jewish community that gave the city so much of its character was almost entirely destroyed during the German occupation; the small cemetery on Ulica Wschodnia is one of the few surviving traces.