Palaces

Pilica Palace

The palace in Pilica, also called the castle, is one of the most unusual residences of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland: a palazzo in fortezza, an Italian villa built into a bastion fortress. The late-Renaissance residence was begun shortly before 1605 by Wojciech Padniewski, castellan of Oświęcim, close to the springs of the Pilica river, the longest left tributary of the Vistula.

An Italian villa inside a fortress

Around 1620 Jerzy Zbaraski enlarged the residence, adding a hall over the courtyard supported on two rows of columns and a two-storey loggia of 13 arcades, which gave the palace the form of an Italian villa. The first fortifications were designed here in 1623 by the Venetian engineer Andrea dell'Aqua, known from his work on Zamość; they outlined a four-sided fortress with six bastions and a moat 20 metres wide. Between 1640 and 1650 Stanisław Warszycki completed the ramparts with casemates, a ravelin and a drawbridge. Even so, in November 1655 the fortress was briefly taken by the Swedes and recovered by Warszycki in February 1656. In 1731–1740 Maria Sobieska née Wessel added a baroque terrace and dismantled two bastions, stripping the fortress of its military character.

Later history and today

In 1875–1880 Leon Epstein gave the palace its neo-Renaissance brick dress. From 1908 the estate belonged to the Arkuszewski family, and after the Second World War the building gradually fell into ruin. In 1990 Barbara Piasecka-Johnson began a thorough reconstruction, interrupted after inheritance lawsuits. Today the palace is viewed from the outside: the defensive walls, the 1863 insurgent mound, the First World War cemetery of 1914 and the park's Elm of Elżbieta, over 7 metres in girth, reward the walk.