Glimpsed from a distance, it looks truly monumental — in fact, such is the fantastical impression it casts, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid if the Gryffindor Quidditch team swooped down following a morning of aerial maneuvers.
Krzyżtopór is that sort of place, a castle with the heady ability to fire flights of fancy. A magical point on the map of Poland, that it lacks the PR of Malbork or Wawel is a blessing in disguise. Arriving, it’s often to an empty, dusty car park. Sound, if you can call it that, is limited to the isolated shrieks of nature and the far-away splutter of a farmer’s wheezing tractor.
The bucolic backdrop is, in many ways, part of the allure. Set amid rolling fields and impossibly big skies, there’s a solitude here that’s missing in Poland’s bigger tourist draws; the flat spaces and placid stillness serve to emphasize the immovable might of the edifice in front. Rising from the emptiness, almost like a Polish Ayers Rock, Krzyżtopór is an ethereal sight that’s delicious on the eye.
Filling twin duties as a fortress and a palace, its construction was ordered by Krzysztof Ossoliński, a powerful nobleman and the voivode of Sandomierz. Recruiting Wawrzyniec Senes to design it, the Italian-born architect set about his work completely free of financial restraints. Finally completed in 1644, the results were magnificent.
Equally inspired by the calendar as much as it was by the ruthless exhibitionism of the era, the castle featured 365 windows to represent the days of the year, 52 rooms for the number of weeks, a dozen ballrooms to mark the months, and four towers to symbolize the seasons.
Incorporating 11,000 tonnes of sandstone, 30,000 tiles, and 200,000 bricks, Krzyżtopór was an indulgent exercise in largesse. In its final form, what arose was Europe’s biggest palace, a title it would hold until the completion of Versailles.
A fusion of words, the name Krzyżtopór was a tribute to Ossoliński’s faith (krzyż: cross) and ancestral coat of arms (topór: axe).
Everything about his castle seemed designed to thrill. The underground stables were equipped with crystal mirrors and marble troughs, whilst other special features included an upper-floor hall with an exotic aquarium for a ceiling. Fresh running water in all rooms, dumb waiters, and a ventilation system all added to the sense of a ground-breaking property that was unique for the times.
If that wasn’t enough, according to oft-repeated legend, a tunnel measuring several kilometers was also added, allowing Ossoliński and his guests secret stagecoach access to the nearby town of Ossolin.
Neither were military functions overlooked. Set on a pentagonal footprint, the castle’s defensive properties were regarded as state-of-the-art. This was to be an impregnable fortress, one that would express the permanence and power of the Ossoliński family. “Of Poland’s many castles,” wrote an anonymous 17th-century German traveler, “this one is the most beautiful.”
But pride comes before a fall. Rapid advances in military tactics and technology meant that just eleven years after its completion Krzyżtopór surrendered after being surrounded by Swedish forces. If some sources are to be believed, the castle waved the white flag before a single shot could be fired.
Heavily plundered by its new occupants, it then faced outright ruin the following century when it was ransacked by Russian troops. The leftovers are what you see today – an eerie, empty husk whose exploration sucks you into a labyrinth of vast hallways and dank, subterranean chambers. It is in the latter that locals sought shelter during WWII, their numbers boosted by Home Army soldiers who would purportedly use the cellars to practice their shooting.
Outside, meanwhile, a memorial commemorates dozens of Poles executed on this spot in reprisal for an assassination attempt on a local Nazi figure.
These and other stories lend Krzyżtopór an oddly unsettling climate that marries the serene with the forlorn. Shadows swirl across an elliptical courtyard whose empty apertures were once filled with portraits of the Ossolińskis; in the distance, unidentified echoes rattle throughout the castle’s shell. Stories of secret tunnels and buried treasure become easy to believe after roaming the ruins.
This eerie undercurrent reaches a crescendo at dusk when the phantom figure of a ‘white horseman’ appears on the ramparts. Call him Baldwin. The son of Krzysztof Ossoliński, he was killed in battle in 1649, struck through the heart by a well-aimed arrow. Said to guard a horde of undiscovered loot, his lurking presence is just another reason to visit this under-the-radar gem.
