Poland · Partial ruin
Chojnik Castle
Chojnik Castle is a medieval fortress standing above the town of Sobieszów (now part of Jelenia Góra) on a steep granite hill in southwestern Poland. Built from the late 13th century and long held by the Schaffgotsch family, the stronghold burned in 1675 and survives as a semi-ruined tourist site that includes a mountain hut, restaurant and visitor paths.
First raised
1292
Its prime
1650
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1650
The shape it held in its prime.
Perched on a bare granite crag, the castle forms a compact rectangular stronghold of light-grey masonry with a continuous crenellated curtain wall and a prominent cylindrical keep at one corner. The walls rise directly from steep rock faces, with narrow slit windows and regular embrasures in the parapet. Surrounding slopes are wooded with birches and pines. At its prime the curtain, keep and added low bastions presented an essentially roofed but austere military silhouette, with inner ranges opening onto a central courtyard.
Its story
The story of Chojnik Castle.
Duke Bolko I the Strict ordered the castle raised in 1292 on the Chojnik hill, at the site of a hunting lodge built by his father Bolesław II the Bald, to protect the borders of his Duchy of Jawor against Wenceslaus II of Bohemia. His grandson Bolko II the Small, the last independent Piast duke, began reconstructing it in 1355.
After Bolko II died without issue in 1368, his widow Agnes von Habsburg sold the castle to the knight Gotsche Schoff — founder of the Schaffgotsch line that held Chojnik for most of its existence. Gotsche II Schoff expanded the castle in 1393 and donated its Gothic chapel, completed in 1403. The fortress withstood Hussite attacks, and Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch served the Emperor under Wallenstein in the Thirty Years' War.
After fire destroyed the castle in 1675 the comital family moved down to the palace of Warmbrunn, and the ruin became a tourist attraction as early as the 18th century, visited by the Prussian royal family, Kleist and Goethe, and made famous across Germany by a Theodor Körner poem. The Schaffgotsches owned the ruins until the family's expulsion in 1945; the site now stands within the Karkonosze National Park.
Step inside
9 places to explore in 1650.
The record describes 9 distinct spots at Chojnik Castle — including 3 interiors: inside the round keep, inner courtyard and service ranges, gothic chapel of st catherine and st george. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more photos, more angles and more rooms of the immersive experience.
Create History
Recreate Chojnik Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1650 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate Castle to Explore →Whose castle
Clans who held Chojnik Castle.
The families that held Chojnik Castle for a decade or more across its history — follow a name to its clan.
Schaffgotsch
Bought from Bolko II's widow in 1368 by the knight Gotsche Schoff, the castle stayed with the Schaffgotsch family until their expulsion in 1945.
