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palace complex - Zabytek.pl

palace complex


palace Late 18th c. Niedźwiedź

Address
Niedźwiedź, 21

Location
woj. małopolskie, pow. krakowski, gm. Słomniki - obszar wiejski

A valuable example of the palace architecture from the period of the reign of King Stanislaus Augustus

History

The oldest references to Niedźwiedź come from the records of the Wawel Cathedral during the reign of Casimir II the Just. Before the mid-15th century, Niedźwiedź was the property of the Szant family. From the second half of the 15th century, it was owned by the Stadnicki family, then by the Złotnicki family, and at the turn of the 17th century by the Małachowski family of the Nałęcz coat of arms.

The manor house was probably erected in the late 1880s by Piotr Małachowski, the castellan of Wojnicz and the Kraków voivode.

Around 1808 the property with the house were purchased by Stanisław Wodzicki of the Leliwa coat of arms; after serving as the President of the Senate of the Republic of Kraków in the years 1815-1831, he retired from public life and settled in Niedźwiedź. He converted the manor house into a classicist palace with a typical Polish shingled roof and set up a garden famous for its lavish and unique plants brought from all over the world and nurtured by a permanently employed gardener. Numerous varieties of roses prevailed in the palace garden. Stanisław Wodzicki gave outlet to his passion for gardening by producing a six-volume work, O hodowli roślin (About Plant Breeding). The palace belonged to the Wodzicki family for several generations. After the Great War, the building was managed by the Sklenarski family because the last owner from the Wodzicki family had moved to Kraków in 1914. Before his death, Stanisław bequeathed the property to his nephew, Kazimierz Wodzicki, a young scholar and later a professor at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences.

During WW2, the Germans organised a repair shop in the palace, causing a significant damage of the infrastructure. After the war, the building housed a primary school, the Collective National Council, a cinema, a militia station and the Seed Survey Station. Currently, the palace is a major educational facility covering a primary school, a middle school, and a kindergarten.

Description

The manor house is located in the north part of the village, on the left side of a local road from Niedźwiedź to Słomniki.

The palace in Niedźwiedź is a brick, multi-storey classicist building in the Palladian style with partial basement. It was set on a rectangular plan. On the axis of the front façade, there is a shallow avant-corps with a portico; from the garden side, there is a semicircular avant-corps occupied by an elegant living room. The façades are regular with the levels divided by a cordon cornice and with evenly distributed window openings: rectangular on the ground floor and smaller, square on the first floor. The front avant-corpse is divided by pilasters running through the two levels with a floral and geometric stucco decoration. The giant order portico has four columns. Above it, against the attic, there is a triangular pediment with Wodzicki’s Leliwa coat of arms surrounded by plant ornamentation. The entire edifice is covered by a Polish multi-pitched roof with dormers adorned with slender gables. From the front, the main axis of the ground floor was occupied by an elegant hall and, from the garden, an oval room with conch recesses. It was decorated with stucco in the form of medallions with relief heads in laurel wreaths. Some rooms still feature stucco decorations in the form of medallions or rosettes. In one of the palace rooms, there is also a classicist fireplace with floral and geometric decoration.

Only single specimens of old trees have survived from the once magnificent garden. The most valuable plant is the London plane in the central part of the garden on the south-east side and the remains of a linden alley that led from the palace to the local church.

The manor house is accessible from the outside; today, it houses a school.

Author of the note Grzegorz Młynarczyk, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Kraków 08/2015

Bibliography

  • Z.Boczkowska, Powiat miechowski, Warszawa 1953, pp. 29-30
  • M.Raińska, Dwory Małopolski historia i współczesność, vol. I, Nowy Sącz 2014, pp. 134-137
  • J.Libicki, Dwory i pałace wiejskie w Małopolsce i na Podkarpaciu, Poznań 2012, pp. 305-306

Category: palace

Architecture: Classicism

Building material:  brick

Protection: Register of monuments, Monuments records

Inspire id: PL.1.9.ZIPOZ.NID_N_12_BK.194789, PL.1.9.ZIPOZ.NID_E_12_BK.367743