Дунаївці

Dunaivtsi community lies in the south of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, between Kamianets-Podilskyi and Khmelnytskyi, and its centre, the town of Dunaivtsi, coincides with the geographic heart of the territory. The village of Dunaivtsi is first mentioned in the 15th century, and in 1592 King Sigismund III granted the settlement Magdeburg rights. Ever since, the town has had a coat of arms showing a crane holding a stone, a symbol of vigilance. In the 19th century Count Krasinski invited German cloth makers here, and Dunaivtsi became a textile centre, earning the name 'Podillia Manchester'. That era is recalled by the Lutheran kirk, the Krasinski palace, the Capuchin monastery, the Zavoiko manor and the local history museum housed in a former German shoemaker's home. Fifty villages surround the town. Near Lysets, in the canyon of the Bobrovets river, the turquoise Burbun waterfall roars. In Holozubyntsi the Skibniewski palace stands on a hill surrounded by an old park. Minkivtsi keeps an arboretum and the memory of Count Marchocki's 'Minkivtsi state', Prytulivka has a water mill from 1896, and Kryvchyk has the Krupensky palace with its clock tower. Local villages were famed for stonecutting for centuries, and Lysets for plums dried in stone kilns. The community opens the tourist season every year and lays out new routes, so it is easy to combine history, nature and Podillia cuisine here.