Richard AmmonZakopane is a town in southern Poland with some 30,000 inhabitants. The town, a place of Góral culture and informally known as "the winter capital of Poland," lies at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, the only alpine mountain range in the Carpathian Mountains. It is an appealing tourist town with its forests and streams and traditional wooden architecture.
One of the most famous residents was Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), internationally reknown classical music composer. Szymanowski (pronounced Karl Shiminovsky) died in a sanatorium in Lausanne, Switzerland from tuberculosis at the age of 55. His house, the Villa Atma, is now a museum dedicated to the artist. (The name ‘Atma’ is derived form the Sanskrit word for ‘soul’.)
