Poland · Still standing
Stobnica Castle
Zamek w Stobnicy
Stobnica Castle is a contemporary Revivalist building in Stobnica, Poland, built to imitate a large medieval fortress. As of the early 2020s the complex is still under construction and partially accessible to visitors via an educational path. Its location at the edge of the Noteć Forest and a Natura 2000 area has been controversial.
Its prime
2023
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 2023
What Stobnica Castle looked like in its prime.
A large red-brick Revivalist castle set on a narrow island or promontory surrounded by a water-filled moat, backed by dense pine forest. Massive light-coloured stone lower curtain walls with crenellated parapets enclose inner brick ranges; multiple round and square towers punctuate the curtain, and a very tall, rectangular central keep with high arched window-openings rises above the complex. Several façades show scaffolding and a tall construction crane; roofs are mostly flat battlemented parapets with a few pitched sections.
Its story
The story of Stobnica Castle.
An Imitation Castle on a Made Island, from 2015
The castle at Stobnica is a building of the 21st century, not a medieval survival: a contemporary work of revivalism that imitates a large medieval castle. Since 2015 it has been going up on an artificially raised island among ponds near the village, in Oborniki County in Greater Poland, to a design by the architect Waldemar Szeszuła for the Poznań firm D.J.T. The block runs about 150 metres by 100, with a tower put at 50 metres in various accounts, and its fifteen planned storeys are to hold 46 dwellings for as many as 97 residents with ten staff. It was still unfinished in 2024.
Since 2023 a paid forest trail has run 2.2 km around the site, mostly along the water's edge, with twelve information boards, an exhibition of the Polish stone used in the building and a heated timber pavilion for workshops.
The Noteć Forest Permits, 2018-2026
The work became public knowledge in 2018 and drew considerable controversy for its position on the edge of the Noteć Forest and a Natura 2000 area. In July 2020 police acting on prosecutors' orders detained seven people connected with the project; administrative proceedings found that the Oborniki starosta had broken the law, but the Greater Poland governor would not annul the building consent, and he was dismissed by the prime minister that December. In August 2021 the chief building inspector declared the 2015 permit invalid, only for the administrative court in Warsaw to quash that ruling in January 2022 and allow the work to continue. The Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the prosecutors' appeals in March 2025 and, in 2026, a further appeal by the General Director for Environmental Protection, holding the building consent lawful.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 2023.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Stobnica Castle, including the full exterior approach. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Stobnica Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 2023, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Castle Siege
Play Castle Siege at Stobnica Castle.
A strategy game played on Stobnica Castle’s real ground plan: the same surveyed walls shown in the archive below. Post your finite garrison on the battlements between assaults, then hold out as rams, siege towers, trebuchets and sappers arrive in ever-worse waves.
Sign in free to see the garrison muster. One castle costs 150 Clan Coins and is yours forever.
Sign in to take command →
