Kmita Castle in Lesko

In 1767 the cellars of Lesko Castle held 122 bottles of Hungarian wine, 64 barrels and several casks of mead – the household inventory of a residence that over four centuries changed hands many times, burned and was rebuilt. Kmita Castle in Lesko, the gateway to the Bieszczady Mountains, is no museum today but a place to stay, yet its oldest walls date from the 16th century.

History: from the Kmita tower to a miners' holiday home

The Kmita family moved to Lesko from nearby Sobień Castle, which had been devastated in 1512. In 1538 Piotr Kmita, Grand Marshal of the Crown, began building a stone residence here in place of a wooden manor; the first element was a residential tower. Kmita died in 1553 without a male heir, and the castle passed to his sister Katarzyna and the Stadnicki family. Around 1580 they gave it a Renaissance look with a decorative parapet, and after the Swedish invasion of the 1650s they surrounded the hill with walls, towers and a bastion. In 1704, during the Great Northern War, Swedish troops looted and set fire to the castle; rebuilding lasted until 1712.

The castle then passed through marriages to the Ossoliński and Mniszech families and finally to the Krasicki family, who held Lesko until 1939. After a great fire at the end of the 18th century it was remodelled to a design by Wincenty Pol – in the 1830s it lost its defensive features and became a Neoclassical residence with single-storey wings and galleries. In 1914–1915 retreating Russian troops looted the rooms and set them on fire. After the Second World War the castle housed storerooms and a kindergarten, and from 1956 a holiday home of the Makoszowy coal mine in Zabrze. Since 2000 there have been proceedings over returning the castle to the Krasicki family, and in 2023 its management was handed to the district authorities of Lesko.

What to see

• The round corner tower – one of the former cylindrical towers that survives from the 17th-century fortifications.
• Remains of the south-eastern bastion on the escarpment.
• The ground floor of the Kmita tower in the western corner – the oldest part of the castle, with thick walls and a vault resting on a single central pillar (only accessible as part of the accommodation).
• The courtyard with galleried wings from the 19th-century remodelling, and the castle park with its open-air amphitheatre.

Interesting facts

In 1693 the castle library held 325 books, including 86 on politics and 32 volumes of poetry; four years later the count had grown to 378. On 16 August 1769 Franciszek Pułaski, a cavalry captain of the Bar Confederation and cousin of Casimir Pulaski, died in the castle after being wounded in the battle of Hoszów. Sources differ on some dates – the great fire, for example, is dated to either 1783 or 1785.

Tripto tip

You see the castle from the outside, with no ticket – the interiors are used by guests of the accommodation, and the building's status has recently been changing, so check on site whether you can enter the courtyard. You can see the round tower and the remains of the walls by walking around the castle and into the castle park. Allow about 30 minutes. Remember that this is the site of a working guesthouse – do not enter the buildings without the staff's permission.