Polonezköy is a Polish village inside the Beykoz forest, north-east of Istanbul, and the forest comes right up to the gates. Tall woodland closes over the road, then breaks open onto meadows where horses graze. At weekends the village turns into one long table: garden restaurants fill, grill smoke drifts between the trees, and the single lane fills with parked cars. The woods around it are protected ground — Istanbul's first nature park, declared in 1994 — so the city stops at the treeline.
About four hundred people are registered in the village, and the count roughly doubles over the summer. Those of Polish descent are now a minority inside it: around ninety a decade ago, about fifty by 2025. The old farms are gone. Since the 1960s the village has lived on visitors, and most of its houses now work as pensions, kitchens or garden restaurants. What holds the Polish thread is the parish, which runs the language lessons and the village library. Its Mass is said on Saturday evening, in Polish and Turkish, because Sunday is the day everyone here is serving lunch.