Darłowo Castle

Work on the Castle of the Pomeranian Dukes began in 1352, in the reign of Bogislaw V and Elizabeth of Poland, daughter of Casimir III the Great. The site was an artificial island made between the river Wieprza and the Mill Canal, and the castle raised on it was of brick, on a rectangle of 31 by 35 metres, with a tower 24 metres high. It is the only Gothic castle on the Polish coast of the Baltic. The town's dealings with the Hanseatic League date from the same reign, and Darłowo carried the title of the Royal City of Darłowo.

For the House of Pomerania this was never more than a secondary residence, but it was enlarged and modernised through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into a seat fit for a ruler.

The largest of those campaigns ran from 1449 to 1459 under Eric of Pomerania, who rebuilt Darłowo to the pattern of his earlier seat at Kronborg and strengthened its defences, adding a second line in the form of dikes drawn around the castle. Bogislaw X added a new wing after him, and under Barnim XI the Knights' Hall and the southern gate were each raised by two storeys and a new northern gatehouse was thrown out beyond the line of the walls.

In 1622 Bogislaw XIV left the castle to Denmark. Two years later a great fire devastated it, and Bogislaw XIV, the last duke of the House of Pomerania, rebuilt what had burned. He did not put it back in its original style. The castle lost many of its defences, and a richly ornamented chapel was fitted out, its furnishings including the silver altar of Darłowo.

On the duke's death the castle came to the entail-holders of the Oldenburg line, and his widow, Duchess Elisabeth of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, took it over and lived there until she died.

In 1773 Christian VII of Denmark handed the castle to Frederick II of Prussia. Frederick William III had the wall around it pulled down and military barracks built inside, and in 1807 and 1808 it served as a hospital for Napoleonic soldiers. In 1840 it was the setting for feasts held in honour of Frederick William IV after his coronation. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the buildings also held warehouses, a hospital, a court and a prison.

In the years of the January Uprising the kings of Denmark, Frederick VII and then Christian IX, pressed to get the ducal castle at Darłowo back. Christian IX recovered it after long effort, though not the whole town, and his house held the castle until 1912 and the death of Frederick VIII.

Christian X resolved to turn the castle into a museum and carried the plan through in 1930. Darłowo town was badly damaged in the Second World War, but the castle came through it undestroyed, and in 1945 a regional museum was established there. A thorough overhaul, carried out with archaeologists and conservators between 1971 and 1988, ended with the museum reopening to visitors on 22 October 1988. The castle is a listed monument and remains the seat of the museum at Darłowo.