Ludźmierz is located in the Nowy Targ Basin, on the bank of the Czarny Dunajec River, two kilometres west of Nowy Targ. It’s surrounded by farmland, meadows and forests occupying the gentle slopes of the surrounding hills. The axis of the village is the road from Nowy Targ to Pyzówka. Near Ludźmierz, in the high peat bogs, there is unique peat bog vegetation with a swampy variety of dwarf pine.

The history of the village dates back to the 13th century and is linked to the establishment of a Cistercian monastery built by monks coming from Jędrzejów, the building of a church and the founding of a village. The monastery existed from 1234 to 1245, which then moved to Szczyrzyc. The first larch church was covered with shingles; afterwards, between 1869 and 1877, it was demolished, and a new neo-Gothic church was built. In the new church, the Rococo altar contains a statue of Our Lady of Ludźmierz – Highlander and Queen of Podhale. This is the most important Marian shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Podhale and a place of pilgrimage, raised to the rank of a basilica minor in 2001. The cult of Mary has been going on here for centuries, and the miracle-famous statue of the Madonna dates from around 1400. Władysław Orkan, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer and Jan Kasprowicz wrote about it.

Ludźmierz is also the home village of Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetamajer, who was the prototype for the character of the Poet in Stanisław Wyspiański’s drama The Wedding. His half-brother Włodzimierz Tetmajer was a painter. The Tetmajers moved to Kraków in 1883, and their family home in Ludźmierz has not survived to the present. There’s a symbolic grave of the poet in the cemetery.

A tourist trail from Szaflary to the Orava Foothills and further along to Babia Góra runs through the village.