Introduction

The titular “unobvious obvious” is a type of metaphor that describes urban planning heritage assets, many of which are currently endangered due to insufficient heritage conservation and them being unrecognised and underappreciated as cultural assets by local communities.

The need to strengthen the conservation of historical urban layouts in Lesser Poland is currently a major problem in the ongoing process of protecting the Voivodeship's monuments. Until recently, it was medieval structures [Kuśnierz-Krupa, 2019] that crystallised over 500 years ago that attracted the most attention, and which were often without any form of statutory conservation, which resulted in their gradual decay [Kuśnierz, Kuśnierz-Krupa, 2019, pp. 37–44].

It is therefore time to discuss the equally crucial issue that is the conservation of early-modern-period urban layouts. Such layouts have likewise survived in the territory of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship and remain valuable showcases of the development of urban planning thought, especially thought from the Renaissance period. One such case is the town of Dąbrowa Tarnowska, whose urban layout has thus far not been placed under statutory conservation (the layout is not included in the immovable monuments register and the area does not have a local spatial development plan in place).

Dąbrowa Tarnowska is located in the north-eastern part of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is the seat of the Dąbrowski powiat and of the municipality of Dąbrowa Tarnowska. The town is located on the river Breń, around 15 km to the north of Tarnow.

Renaissance-period Urban Planning in Poland – General Remarks

The development of Renaissance urban planning in Poland, and especially in historical Lesser Poland, coincided with the period between the sixteenth and the middle of the seventeenth century. This was tied with a crisis of medieval cities that were cramped, overcrowded and had obsolete and primarily wooden buildings and relatively small marketplaces that were no longer sufficient in the face of the economic liveliness of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries [Książek, 1988; Kuśnierz, 1989].

Humanistic currents and urban planning theory from Italy, brought to Poland mostly by Italian artists and architects, as well as Poles themselves, largely magnates who educated themselves abroad, had a profound impact on the development of Renaissance urban planning in Poland.