Palace Czartoryski Puławy

Pałac Czartoryskich, Puławy

Castles and parks in Lublin Voivodeship: Puławy

The former residence of the Polish-Lithuanian magnate family Czartoryski belongs to the large and worth seeing parks in the southeast of Poland. The village of Puławy is located about 130 km southeast of Warsaw, just before the artist town of Kazimierz Dolny, which is famous throughout Poland.

Puławy, Palace and Park in Lublin

In the 17th century, the area was owned by the Lubomirski family and was the site of a Baroque castle designed by Tylman van Gameren, which was set on fire and completely destroyed by the Swedish army in 1701.

On the foundations of the burnt ruins, a rococo chateau with a French garden was first built around 1731, which was destroyed by the Russian army in 1794. Two years later, reconstruction began again, this time under the direction of Christian Piotr Aigner, who was responsible for the classicist reconstruction visible today. Today the castle presents itself as a large horseshoe-shaped complex with elongated side wings and a large courtyard of honor.

Until about the 1920s, the castle was an important cultural meeting place of the Polish nobility. Later it became a center of resistance against the Russian occupiers, but finally fell under Russian administration in 1831.

As early as the second half of the 19th century, an agricultural institute was founded here, which later became the "Institute of Soil Science and Crop Production", which is still based in the castle today.

The representative main part of the castle houses a museum. Worth seeing, besides the exhibits, are, among others, the "Gothic Hall", reconstructed salons, the entrance hall with barrel vault and the classicistic two-flight staircase with artfully forged cast-iron banister.

The park of about 30 hectares was extended according to the ideas of Izabella Czartoryska and was given the character of a romantic landscape park in English style. Worth mentioning are the various buildings and facilities, especially the Marynki Palace at the southeastern end of the park, which resembles an independent residence in its appearance.