Pławniowice Palace

With its clock tower, spires and dormers, this red-brick palace looks as if it had been carried over from the Netherlands to the edge of the A4 motorway. Count Franz II von Ballestrem built it in 1882–1885 for 386,000 marks, and after 1945 the former seat of one of Upper Silesia's richest industrial families passed to the Church. Today it is the Education and Formation Centre of the Diocese of Gliwice, with a park, a chapel that serves as the parish church, and state rooms open on selected days.

History: from stronghold to Ballestrem palace

Pławniowice is first mentioned in 1317. The household accounts of King Władysław Jagiełło from 1393 refer to a stronghold here manned by Polish knights; the walls of an unknown fortress were found in the 1960s a few hundred metres from the palace. In 1737 the estate was bought by Baron Franz Wolfgang von Stechow, and in 1798 it passed by inheritance to the Ballestrem family, originally from northern Italy, who held it until 1945.

The present palace replaced a building from 1737 and was designed by master builder Konstanty Heidenreich of Kopice. It is a three-winged, two-storey residence on a U-shaped plan, with clinker-brick façades and stone details, in the Dutch Mannerist Revival style with Gothic Revival touches. A square clock tower with a tall pyramid roof rises above it all. The south-west wing holds the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, consecrated on 15 October 1885.

War and restoration

In early 1945 Count Nikolaus von Ballestrem fled from the Red Army to Dresden and was killed there in the air raids of February 1945. Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev was quartered in the palace, and its collections of porcelain and silver disappeared. After the war Benedictine nuns resettled from Lviv lived in part of the palace, a parish used the chapel wing, and the rest housed offices of a state farm. Since 1989 the complex has been run by Father Krystian Worbs; major restoration began in 1993, partly funded by a grant from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior. In 2007 the complex won the "Well-Kept Monument" award of Poland's General Conservator of Monuments.

What to see

• The façade with the Ballestrem arms and the motto "Nulla me terrent" (Nothing frightens me).
• The courtyard with a statue of the Virgin and Child from around 1870 and a monument with a bust of the family's founder, unveiled in 1907.
• The Cavalier House of 1881, inscribed "Franz II. Graf von Ballestrem. 1881" in its gable.
• The park of 1885 (about 2.4 ha) with a ginkgo, a bald cypress, an eastern hemlock and magnolias.
• Windows made of small leaded panes – a sign of the painstaking restoration.

Tripto tip

Entry to the park is charged: PLN 15 standard and PLN 10 reduced, open 8:00–18:00 in spring and summer. Individual visitors can see the state rooms in April–June, September and October on Sundays (12:30–14:30) and on Tuesdays and Thursdays (14:00–15:30); in July and August Saturdays are added. From November to March the interiors are open only to organised groups booked in advance. In summer the palace hosts the "Palace Musical Summer" concert series, held for the 25th time in 2026. The palace stands at Gliwicka 46, by the junction of the A4 motorway and national road 40, about 18 km from Gliwice; allow an hour for the park and courtyard, an hour and a half with the interiors.