The aim of this paper is to trace the links between Professor Wiktor Zin’s artistic work and activity and his hometown – Hrubieszów. The Professor’s message on the importance of documenting and protecting this heritage has not lost its relevance, especially today, when historical wooden buildings are being destroyed. The paper concludes that the place of birth was an important motif in Wiktor Zin’s artistic work and activity. In addition to his achievements in terms of publications and designs, the popularization of this key issue to a wider audience, which continues to this day, was of importance for the protection of the cultural heritage of Hrubieszów.

For centuries, the roof has been a reminiscence, the symbol of basic human shelter and territory. Using the example of several ethnic groups living in Southeast Asia, Bhutan and Poland, the basic determinants of roof shape creation in vernacular architecture are discussed and similarities highlighted. In wooden architecture in different regions of the world, the form and construction of the roof are determined primarily by local conditions: climatic conditions, available materials, local tradition, culture, customs. Often it is the shape of the roof that determines the visual identity of a given ethnic group, with its traditions and way of life. The author points out that societies from different regions of the world with no cultural ties created wooden architecture based on the same factors and that the similarities are already present at the level of thinking patterns resulting, for example, from the need to emphasize the importance of religious buildings by means of the stacked, pent hip form of the basic roof.

This paper presents a new edition and translation of the contract for the erection of the castle in Kórnik that was concluded in 1426 by and between a chancellor of the Poznań cathedral chapter, Mikołaj z Górki, owner of the Kórnik estate, and a Poznań carpenter Niklos (Nicholas). It is the oldest known document of the history of the first, medieval wooden castle. Written down in Latin, it has survived in the book of the Poznań Consistory. It has a special value as a source of information, but it is also unique from the point of view of diplomatics as the so-called chirograph (a document marked by its characteristic way in which it is written down and its manner of authentication). The contract is not only a first-rate source for research into the history of wooden and defensive architecture in late medieval Poland, but also, in view of the Polish words used to explain Latin terminology in the text, can be considered a memorial to the Polish language of the past. The four German words have a similar value, too.