Historic Park in Złoty Potok

In the park at Złoty Potok stands a memorial boulder with an inscription recalling that Jan Kiepura, later a world-famous tenor, attended the nursery school run here by Countess Stefania Raczyńska. It is a good starting point for a walk through nearly 40 hectares of landscaped parkland along the Wiercica stream, home to the Raczyński Palace and the manor house where the poet Zygmunt Krasiński spent the summer of 1857. The park is enclosed by a wall, and the stream running through its middle is dammed into several ponds.

History: the Krasińskis, the Raczyńskis and Szanior

In the mid-19th century the estate was bought by General Wincenty Krasiński, who in 1856 built a Neoclassical palace on the site of an older manor known as the Zameczek, or "little castle". He set aside the neighbouring manor house of 1829 for his son. Zygmunt Krasiński, one of Poland's great Romantic poets, spent the summer of 1857 here, named several of the local rocks, and called the pond in front of the palace Irydion after one of his own dramas. After his death the estate passed to his daughter Maria, who in 1877 married Count Edward Raczyński.

The park owes its present form to Franciszek Szanior, a graduate of a Paris horticultural school who designed parks in Warsaw and below the Jasna Góra monastery, and who was hired by Count Karol Raczyński. In its heyday an artificial cascade with a romantic footbridge splashed over the Wiercica, a main avenue led to the palace from the west, and an orangery and a small power station stood behind the gatehouse. Other paths ran south to the church and east to the Bukówka forester's lodge.

The Raczyńskis lived here until 1939, when the German occupiers forced them to leave. After the war the estate was nationalised, and for many years the palace housed a school.

What to see

• The Raczyński Palace above the Irydion pond, with the family's Nałęcz coat of arms in the pediment; it looks best from the far bank.
• The Krasiński manor house of 1829, now the Zygmunt Krasiński Regional Museum.
• The "Dziad" oak ("Old Man") — a protected pedunculate oak with a girth of nearly 650 cm, estimated at around 600 years old.
• Trees introduced by Szanior: tulip trees, American lindens, eastern hemlocks and Japanese larches, plus a fine small-leaved lime and a white poplar.
• The boulder commemorating Jan Kiepura and his time at the Raczyński nursery.
• The maple avenue towards Częstochowa, planted in the Krasiński era and listed as a heritage site — at its most colourful in autumn.

Tripto tip

The palace is in poor structural condition and cannot be visited, but the park is open to everyone, and the house is best admired from outside, across the Irydion pond. Allow about an hour for a walk around the park, or two if you add the museum in the manor house. Złoty Potok lies in Janów municipality, Częstochowa County, in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland (the Polish Jura); from the park you can continue along the Wiercica valley to the "Parkowe" nature reserve with the Twardowski Gate and Devil's Bridges rock formations.