Żmigród Palace

In July 1813, in the palace at Żmigród – then the German town of Trachenberg – King Frederick William III of Prussia, Tsar Alexander I and Sweden's Crown Prince Charles John, formerly Napoleon's marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, agreed on a strategy for the war against France. A few months later that plan led to Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig. What remains of the Hatzfeldt family's residence today is a secured, permanent ruin with a Baroque façade, next to a Renaissance tower with a viewing terrace and a 15-hectare park on the Barycz river.

From stronghold to Baroque residence

A fortified building on this site is mentioned in documents from 1296, and in the 14th century the first brick stronghold was built, owned at times by the bishops of Wrocław and the dukes of Oleśnica. In 1560 the owners of the day, the Kurzbach family, built a brick residential tower – above its entrance you can still see a panel with the Kurzbach and Maltzahn coats of arms and the date 1560. During the Thirty Years' War the castle was turned into a fortress, and in 1641 Emperor Ferdinand III granted the estate to Melchior von Hatzfeldt.

The Hatzfeldts pulled down the fortifications and in the 1680s began building a Baroque residence. After a fire in 1689, the palace was rebuilt in 1706–1708 to a design by Christoph Hackner. In 1762–1765 Carl Gotthard Langhans – who later designed Berlin's Brandenburg Gate – added a Neoclassical summer wing almost 100 metres long. At its centre was the Great Hall, where the decisions of 1813 were taken.

The Trachenberg Protocol

The Trachenberg conference ran from 9 to 12 July 1813, during a ceasefire. The plan adopted here was to avoid pitched battle with Napoleon himself and instead defeat his marshals' armies one by one until the Allies had built up overwhelming strength. The strategy worked: later in 1813, at Leipzig, Napoleon suffered a decisive defeat.

What to see today

• The palace ruin – in January 1945 Soviet soldiers set the residence on fire. In 2007–2008 the façade was restored and the main block secured as a permanent ruin open to visitors.
• The trellis from 2012 – a structure that symbolically recreates the vanished Langhans wing.
• The 1560 tower – the oldest fully preserved building of the complex. Until 1945 it housed one of the largest private archives in Silesia. Today the ground floor is a tourist information point, with a conference room, a knights' hall for exhibitions and concerts and a guest apartment above, and a viewing terrace at the very top.
• The park, about 15 hectares, laid out around 1800 on the site of earthwork fortifications: protected trees (a pedunculate oak and a yew), a 19th-century iron flagpole, Langhans's former orangery and an island with two footbridges, a pergola, a fire pit and a Japanese-style pavilion.

Tripto tip

Start at the tower: the tourist information desk can tell you whether the viewing terrace is open, and from the top you get the best view of the layout of the ruins and park. Allow about 1.5 hours for the ruins, the tower and a walk in the park. Żmigród lies in the Barycz Valley Landscape Park, famous for its fishponds and birdlife, so the visit combines well with birdwatching nearby.