Zatonie Palace and Ducal Park

Roofless palace ruins with trees showing through empty windows, and the vast park of a former Duchess of Sagan: Zatonie, now part of Zielona Góra, is one of Zielona Góra’s most popular places for a walk. The palace burned down in 1945 and was never rebuilt. Instead the city secured the walls, opened them to visitors and recreated the 19th-century orangery.

History: Duchess Dorothea’s dowry

A Baroque manor was built here in 1689 by Balthasar von Unruh. In 1809 Peter von Biron, Duke of Sagan, bought the estate as a dowry for his youngest daughter Dorothea, who married that same year. Dorothea de Talleyrand-Périgord only moved to Zatonie in the 1840s, and those years were the palace’s heyday. In 1841 the Prussian king Frederick William IV visited with his wife. In 1842–1843 the manor was rebuilt in Neoclassical style, raised by a storey and extended. Work also began on reshaping the park, probably to designs by Peter Joseph Lenné, the Berlin court gardener.

After Dorothea’s death in 1862 her son Alexandre Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord inherited the palace and remodelled it and the orangery in the early 1870s. In 1879 the estate was bought by Karl Rudolf Friedenthal. In 1945 Soviet soldiers set the palace on fire.

What to see

• The palace ruins: a rectangular two-storey block with an attic parapet that still bears a cartouche with the initials RF (Rudolf Friedenthal) and the rose coat of arms of his wife Fanny von Rosenberg. You can walk among the walls and see traces of the old floors.
• A plaque with a German inscription set into the ruined wall, in which Duchess Dorothea describes her rebuilding of the palace in 1842.
• The orangery of 1871, reconstructed with its original antique-inspired décor, now a café.
• The Ducal Park with a lime avenue and wide meadows. In the eastern part, on a mound, stands the Rose Pavilion, which offers the best view of the ruins.

Did you know?

• The restoration of the park and ruins was funded by the Polish–German INTERREG programme as a joint project with Branitz Park on the German side, and was completed in 2020.
• In 2024 the city signed a contract to cover the ruins with a glass roof hidden behind the parapet and invisible from outside, so that events can be held inside the walls for more of the year.
• From 1958 to 1992 the park was a nature reserve.

Tripto tip

The park is open around the clock and free of charge. From Zielona Góra main station take bus 30 to the “Zatonie Parkowa” stop (about 40 minutes), or cycle along the paved path from the city (about 11 km). By car, follow regional road 283; there are several car parks around the park. Allow 1–2 hours for the park and the ruins. Spring is especially lovely, when wild garlic carpets the park, and after dark the ruins are often lit up. Concerts and open-air events take place here in season.