Palaces
In the Soła valley between Milówka and Ujsoły in the Żywiec Beskids stands a palace that travelled from a minor nobleman's manor to a Habsburg residence and a hospital. The original seat was raised around 1809 by the Siemoński family; Anastazy Siemoński turned it into a manor house in 1833. In 1854 the estate was bought by Teodor Primavesi, and in 1894 by Prince Eugeniusz Lubomirski for his son Władysław, on whose order the palace was rebuilt in 1895–1896 in the neo-Renaissance style close to its present look.
On 4 May 1914 the residence was bought by Archduke Karol Stefan Habsburg, then owner of the Żywiec estates. As early as 1916 he designated the palace as a hospital and sanatorium for wounded soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and in 1917 he donated it to the Polish Red Cross as a hospital for lung diseases. The building served healthcare through the entire 20th century: a state anti-tuberculosis sanatorium opened here in 1954, and after a major renovation in 1999 it houses an independent public care hospital. In 1940 the German authorities set up on the palace grounds an assembly point of the Saybusch Action, which expelled the inhabitants of the Żywiec region.
The palace is surrounded by a landmark 19th-century landscape park laid out at the foot and on the slope of Cząpel hill. Its tree stand includes six natural monuments: among them Weymouth pines 310 cm in girth, a small-leaved lime of 470 cm and a sycamore maple of 340 cm. A stations-of-the-cross path leads up the hill from the church. Rajcza lies on the railway line from Żywiec to Zwardoń, so the palace is easy to see on the way to Pilsko.
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