Palaces

Mieroszewski Palace in Będzin

A few steps from the Bedzin castle, in the green Gzichow district, stands a palace built in 1702, whose successive owners recorded their position in the Duchy of Siewierz. The Baroque-Classical residence of the Mieroszewski family, also known as the Gzichow Palace, is today part of the Zaglebie Museum.

The Mieroszewski foundation

The palace was raised by Kazimierz Mieroszewski, modelled on the French residences of his time. In the 1830s it passed to the Siemiencki family, then the Mycielski family, and after the January Uprising it was bought by the Silesian industrial magnate Christian Gustav von Kramsta. From 1890 to 1939 it housed the offices and flats of the administration of the Sosnowiec Mines and Foundries Society, and during the war the building was occupied by a German mining and smelting enterprise.

Period polychromies

The two-storey body has an enfilade layout, with a vestibule in the centre leading from the front door to the garden door. During conservation work at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, 18th-century paintings were discovered: in the western salons scenes with the great commanders of antiquity — Hannibal, Pompey and Scipio Africanus — and in the southern wing hunting scenes whose landscape incorporates, among other things, the Bedzin castle.

Museum and park

After the renovation completed in March 1982 the palace joined the Zaglebie Museum; you can see archaeological, ethnographic and historical collections there, including the exhibitions „Dzieje Ziemi Zaglebiowskiej" (History of the Zaglebie Land) and „Zagroda chlopska w Zaglebiu" (A Peasant Homestead in the Zaglebie). The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday. Behind the palace grows a park laid out at the beginning of the 18th century, with trees over 150 years old — the stone sculptures of Bacchus and Flora were made in 1718 by Jerzy Leonardo Weber. In June a handicraft and crafts fair takes place in front of the palace.