Krasiczyn Castle

An older wooden complex called Sliwnica stood on the site, probably raised in the 14th century, and in the third quarter of the 16th century Jakub of Siecin, forebear of the Krasickis, built a timber-and-masonry fortalice there whose gate still sits in the north wing. Around 1580-1590 Stanislaw Siecinski, castellan of Przemysl, replaced it with a masonry castle on a quadrangular plan with four bastion-towers at the corners and ponds around it. It was a fortified stronghold guarding the southern border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The family took the name Krasicki and the complex was named Krasiczyn after it; the neighbouring town took shape between 1615 and 1620.

Siecinski's son Marcin Krasicki, voivode of Podolia, carried the work on from 1598 and finished it in 1633. Under the Italian architect Galleazzo Appiani he turned the fortress into a mannerist residence, a palazzo in fortezza: the curtain walls and towers were raised and finished with openwork attics, and the west gate was built up into the Clock Tower, which serves as the main gate across a wall bridge over the moat.

The corner towers were named Divine (Boska), Papal (Papieska), Royal (Krolewska) and Noble (Szlachecka), for the Church, the pope, the king and the nobility, reflecting the eternal order of the world in four grades of authority. The Divine Tower was capped with a dome and holds the chapel, which has been compared to Sigismund's Chapel in Krakow's Wawel Cathedral. The Papal Tower's guest rooms were kept for senior churchmen; the papal nuncio Cosimo de Torres is thought to have lodged there and to have presented in the chapel a sword blessed by the pope, who was pressing the Poles to war against the Turks. Between 1594 and 1614 the north wing was extended to hold the owner's rooms and the Great Royal Dining Chamber.

Inside and out the walls carried sgraffito running to some 7,000 square metres, depicting Roman emperors, Polish kings, Krasickis, hunting scenes and saints, worked by craftsmen from Przemysl under Italian direction. Sigismund III Vasa, whose loyal supporter Marcin Krasicki was, came three times, the first in 1608 with his wife Constance of Austria; Wladyslaw IV Vasa, John II Casimir Vasa and Augustus II the Strong followed.

The Krasickis held Krasiczyn until 1687, when it passed briefly to the Modrzewskis and then the Tarlos. Jan Tarlo, voivode of Lublin, was a partisan of Augustus II, and for that Krasiczyn was raided in 1726 by Russian troops and Cossacks: the chambers were stripped, the chapel devastated and the Papal Tower destroyed. In the rebuilding the north wing gained a storey and a mansard roof, and the facades were plastered over, burying the sgraffito. The Potockis followed in 1751, the Pininskis in 1785.

Prince Leon Sapieha bought Krasiczyn in the 1830s. His family remodelled the castle and founded a sawmill, a brewery and a small works making farm implements. On 3 May 1852 fire destroyed most of the complex, the chapel excepted, and repairs ran on to about 1860. Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha was born here in 1867. After damage in the First World War the castle was restored from 1928 under Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz.

Soviet soldiers looted the castle at the start of the Second World War and were quartered in it from October 1939 to June 1941, with Molotov Line fortifications standing nearby in 1941. In 1940 Soviet film-makers shot an anti-Polish film at Krasiczyn, Wind from the East, justifying the invasion of Poland of 17 September 1939. Most of the interior decoration was destroyed, mostly by the Red Army soldiers.

Andrzej Sapieha returned in late 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and set down what he found: "The chapel is completely ruined, all sculptures on the walls destroyed as high as the savages could reach. Altars and pews destroyed... Metal coffins were used by the Bolsheviks as bathtubs."

Poland's communist government nationalised the complex in 1944 and put a forestry secondary school in the buildings; from the 1970s the Warsaw car maker FSO acted as its patron. When FSO was wound up in 1996 the castle and park went to the Industrial Development Agency, which carried out extensive renovation and conservation. A hotel occupies a side wing; parts of the castle are shown to guided groups. In June 2013 the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw upheld a challenge by Michal Sapieha, who is seeking the castle's return. Krasiczyn was designated a Historical Monument of Poland on 20 April 2018.