Balice Palace

A few minutes from Kraków airport, among the old trees of a five-hectare park, stands a palace where King Henry of Valois spent the night in 1574 and where Archduke Charles and Zita – later the last imperial couple of Austria – were guests in 1912. The history of Balice Palace goes back to 1519, and its present neo-Baroque form was created by Prince Dominik Radziwiłł in 1887–1894. The guest book from those years is now displayed at the museum in Nieborów.

From the Boners to Chancellor Szembek

The first manor here was probably built by the knightly Toporczyk family. In 1519 the burgrave Seweryn Boner ordered a comfortable wooden manor with a garden and vineyard, and his son Jan built a Renaissance masonry manor on the same spot. We know what it looked like from a view by Matthias Gerung of around 1536. Through Zofia née Boner the residence passed for a long time to the Firlej family: on 16 February 1574 the king-elect Henry of Valois stopped here on his way to Kraków as Jan Firlej's guest. The manor was probably damaged during the Swedish Deluge; at the end of the 17th century Chancellor Jan Szembek rebuilt it, and after another decline it was restored by Urszula Darowska in the early 19th century.

The Radziwiłłs' golden age

In 1887 Prince Dominik Radziwiłł, who lived in Paris with his wife Dolores de Agramonte, bought Balice from the Hungarian Homolacs family. The palace was remodelled to designs by Tadeusz Stryjeński, and the Radziwiłłs set out to turn the suburban villa into a family home that combined modern comfort with old Polish tradition. Note the projecting front bay crowned with a pediment bearing the Radziwiłł coat of arms (Trąby). In July 1912 Archduke Charles Francis Joseph and Archduchess Zita stayed here. The next owner, Hieronim Radziwiłł, married Renata, daughter of Archduke Charles Stephen of Żywiec.

The golden age ended in 1939. The Germans took over the palace but allowed the family to live in the outbuilding. During the occupation Prince Hieronim gave financial support to the Home Army, employed people in hiding and helped the poorest, and in August 1944 he moved the most valuable objects from the palace to the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.

Did you know?

• The three surviving volumes of the Balice "Memorial Book", bound in carmine leather and filled with entries by the Radziwiłłs' guests, can be seen at Nieborów Palace.
• After 1945 the palace went to the Jagiellonian University, and since the early 1950s it has served the National Research Institute of Animal Production as a conference centre and hotel.
• In 2005, for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, presidents and prime ministers of many countries met here.

Tripto tip

The palace is in Balice, in the Zabierzów district, on the north side of the A4 motorway, right next to Kraków John Paul II International Airport. The interiors are not a museum – visits are possible by prior telephone arrangement with the management of the building, which operates as the institute's hotel. Allow 30–45 minutes for a stroll through the 5-hectare Italian-style park and a look at the façades; it makes a good stop before a flight or after landing in Kraków.