Bukowiec Palace

Bukowiec Palace is the heart of one of the first landscape parks in Lower Silesia. In the late 18th century Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden turned a Renaissance manor house here into a Neoclassical residence and, inspired by his travels in England, surrounded it with a Romantic park with sightlines to the Karkonosze (Giant Mountains), ponds and pavilions. Today the palace is the seat of the Association of Karkonosze Municipalities and partly open to visitors.

History of the residence

Bukowiec is first mentioned around 1305, and in the 14th–16th centuries the village belonged to the von Zedlitz family. A Renaissance manor was built here in the second half of the 16th century and in 1744 was enlarged and given a mansard roof. In 1785 the estate was bought by Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden, the Prussian minister in charge of mining in Silesia. He commissioned the Berlin architect Martin Friedrich Rabe to remodel the manor into a stately palace. At the same time the farm buildings blocking the view of the Karkonosze were demolished, and new ones behind the palace were designed by Karl Gottfried Geisler, a pupil of Langhans.

After the count's death in 1815 his widow, Friederike von Reden, ran the estate. It later passed to her relatives, the von Rotenhan family, who owned it until 1945. The last of them, Friedrich von Rotenhan, tried to restore the estate under the supervision of conservator Günther Grundmann. After the war the palace housed an agricultural school among other institutions, and in 1986 its roof structure was repaired.

The palace and the park

The park was designed by gardener Hans Karl Walther, whom Reden brought to Bukowiec. It covers about 120 ha and combines ponds, meadows, old trees and sightlines with garden buildings. The best known are the Tea House on a rise along the main sightline and the Abbey, an artificial ruin intended as the Reden family's burial place. The whole estate was laid out as an English ornamental farm, in which the farm, the residence and the landscape formed a single composition.

What to look for

• Stucco work in the fireplace hall on the ground floor and in the Sun and Moon rooms on the first floor.
• A fireplace in one of the ground-floor rooms.
• A hidden staircase in the basement leading to the former palace office – its entrance was disguised as the door of an old wardrobe.
• The palace's shape: three storeys, two tower-like projections at a corner and a tall mansard roof, with high steps leading up to the portal.
• Geisler's farm buildings behind the palace.

Interesting facts

Stories persist of an underground tunnel linking the palace with the old St Martin's Church. According to the Association of Karkonosze Municipalities they cannot be verified today, as most of the cellars are filled with sand. Bukowiec is part of the Valley of Palaces and Gardens of the Jelenia Góra Valley – the parks of the neighbouring residences at Karpniki and Mysłakowice were once linked by avenues.

Tripto tip

The palace works as an office building, so you cannot always go inside – check the visiting arrangements before you come. The park is an attraction in its own right: allow 1.5–2 hours for a walk from the palace along the ponds to the Tea House, from where you can see the Karkonosze ridge on a clear day. The trip combines easily with the palaces at Karpniki, Wojanów and Łomnica.