Siewierz Castle

"Beat, steal, kill – but steer clear of Siewierz": this old Polish saying comes from the harsh court that sat in this castle. For almost 350 years the ruins on the Czarna Przemsza river were the capital of an unusual mini-state, the Duchy of Siewierz, ruled by the bishops of Kraków with the title of dukes. Today you can see the gate tower with a viewpoint, the barbican, the bridge and walls once surrounded by water and marshes.

History: a castle on an artificial island

After Siewierz received its town charter (around 1276), an artificial island reinforced with timber piles was built in a bend of the Czarna Przemsza, and a timber-and-earth seat for the castellans was put up on it. The first masonry structure was a cylindrical keep 9 m in diameter, and in 1337–1358 Duke Casimir I of Cieszyn enclosed the courtyard with a wall and added a stone residence. Research since 2001 has shown that a masonry castle already stood here in the second half of the 14th century, not in the 15th century as was often written. In 1443 Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki of Kraków bought the duchy from the indebted Duke Wenceslaus I of Cieszyn.

A duchy run by bishops

From then on the bishops of Kraków were also dukes of Siewierz (dux Severiae). The duchy had its own army, assembly, coinage, nobility and a court known for its severity. The castle became its seat and was enlarged by successive bishops: in 1518 Jan Konarski built a tower over the new gate, and around 1524–1530 Piotr Tomicki had the Gothic keep demolished and its stone reused for new Renaissance residential wings. In 1575 Franciszek Krasiński adapted the castle to firearms, adding an outer wall, an artillery terrace for 10 cannons and a barbican in front of the gate. In the late 17th century the tower received a Baroque onion dome with a lantern.

The end of the duchy

In 1790 the Great Sejm, Poland's reforming parliament, abolished the Duchy of Siewierz and incorporated it into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The last prince-bishop, Feliks Paweł Turski, left the castle, and after brief military use during the Napoleonic Wars it stood empty from 1807 and fell into ruin. Conservation work began intermittently in the 1950s, and since 1999 the castle has been preserved as a stable ruin.

What to see

• the gate tower, once topped by a Baroque dome, now a viewpoint over the Czarna Przemsza valley,
• the barbican and the reconstructed drawbridge,
• the outer walls of the residential wings, braced by buttresses,
• fragments of original stonework: columns and window frames,
• the site of the keep in the courtyard, whose foundations were uncovered in the 1970s.

Tripto tip

In season (May–September) the castle is opened by the local heritage centre (Izba Tradycji i Kultury Dawnej): on weekdays usually 10:00–15:00, at weekends 10:00–18:00, and on summer-holiday weekends until 20:00. Out of season access is irregular and weather-dependent, so call the tourist information point first. Allow 45–60 minutes, including the climb up the tower. The regional tourism portal slaskie.travel offers audio tours of the castle and the market square. The castle is close to canoe trips on the Czarna Przemsza and to the Romanesque Church of St John the Baptist, one of the oldest in the region.