In an interview with a nationwide daily, the mayor of Bolesławiec boasted about an impressive number of visitors:

– Around 250,000. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Bolesławiec will be packed. All hotel rooms have already been booked – said Piotr Roman.

That sounds impressive. The problem is that... no one has ever counted these figures. Neither the municipal authorities nor the Ceramic Festival organizers publish any methodology. There are no reports or traffic analyses. It is not known whether this refers to unique individuals, the number of visits to the Market Square, or perhaps officials’ imagination.

What is the reality?

  • The area of the Market Square in Bolesławiec, where the main part of the fair takes place and where tourists can move around (we excluded outdoor seating areas, stalls, trees, etc.), is approximately 3,500 m² – equivalent to two football pitches.
  • With a density of 2–3 people per m², at any given moment the fairgrounds can hold a maximum of 7,000–10,500 people (all standing next to one another).
  • The Market Square is open for 11 hours a day (10:00–21:00). If visitors spend an average of 2–3 hours there, 3–5 rotations per day are possible.

These figures amount to a maximum of 58,000 visits per day – and that assumes full capacity throughout the entire day. For now, 58,000 is therefore a THEORETICAL figure indicating how many people could fit in the Market Square over the course of the entire fair day.

But that is not all...

How would all these people get to Bolesławiec?

  • Trains: on fair days, a total of 24 passenger trains arrive in the city. Even if all of them were filled to the last seat, they might carry only 3,500 people per day.
  • Parking: the city center has approximately 1,100 spaces, which, with turnover and three people per car, makes it possible to serve 10,000–12,000 people per day.
  • Coaches: let us assume 20 coaches × 50 seats × 3 trips – another 3,000 people per day.
  • Hotels and guesthouses: a maximum of 1,500 beds throughout the city and nearby villages, and therefore only a fraction of the alleged attendance.

In total, the city can accommodate 20,000–25,000 visitors per day, and together with local visitors from the county, it may reach 25,000–35,000 unique people.

So where does “250,000” come from?

It is probably the cumulative number of all visits or passages through the Market Square over the three to five days of the fair. Or perhaps even an estimated aspirational figure. The problem is that no one counts this. There are no reports based on GSM data, crowd counts derived from monitoring, or transport data. The figures are passed from person to person and repeated by the media for years – without verification.

How can this be counted?

It would be enough to use data from mobile network operators, install pedestrian counters on routes leading to the Market Square, or use city cameras and image-analysis systems. Such solutions are used in many Polish cities – but not in Bolesławiec.

A quarter of a million visitors is a figure that looks great in a newspaper, but has no basis in fact. It is more likely the result of repeated passages through the Market Square than the actual number of tourists. The city can be proud of its festival – but it would be worthwhile for Mayor Piotr Roman to finally start measuring its scale honestly, instead of citing unverified slogans.