The construction of the magnificent mansion is usually associated with the names of two architects active in Berlin at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: Ludwig Catel and the then fledgling Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The palace, especially the layout and decoration of the interiors, where Schinkel’s contribution was the greatest, are among the earliest works of this outstanding artist later known throughout Europe. According to another conception, the main author of the project was David Gilly, whom Schinkel was only to assist. The architecture of the palace is reminiscent of the forms characteristic of the Berlin environment in the late 18th century. The residence is surrounded by a landscape park, designed according to tradition by the eminent Berlin gardener Peter Joseph Lenné.

History of the structure

The first mention of Owińska dates back to the year 1249, however, the establishment of the village can be dated to the turn of the 12th/13th century or the beginning of the 13th century. It was a ducal village. Before 1252 the dukes of Wielkopolska, Przemysł I and Bolesław the Pious granted Owińska to the Cistercian nuns from Trzebnica. The monastery was supposed to be a votive offering for saving Wielkopolska from the destructive Tatar invasion. The nuns were brought to Owińska from the Silesian abbey in Trzebnica in the last months of 1252. The church and monastery buildings, preserved to this day, were built in the 18th century.

After the third partition of Poland, the monastery property was confiscated by the Prussian state. The property was bought by a banker from Berlin - Sigismund Otto von Treskow.

The palace in Owińska was built for the von Treskow family in 1804-06. The authors of the project were probably the architects Franz Catel and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, although there is also a hypothesis about David Gilly’s authorship. The palace building is not homogeneous. In the first stage, its seven-axis central part with a front avant-corps was created. After the longitudinal walls were raised to the height of the cornice, the concept was changed: the building was widened, and a shallow avant-corps was added in the central part facing the garden. The park surrounding the residence from the beginning of the 19th century was probably designed by Peter Joseph Lenné. The farm buildings were built between 1797 and 1906 around two farm yards. One was related to grain cultivation and farming, the other to brewing.

The von Treskow family owned Owińska until 1945. After World War II, the property was taken over by the State Treasury and transferred to the State Agricultural Farm. The palace housed, among others, a school and a kindergarten. Currently, the building is not used.

Description of the structure

The palace and park complex is situated to the northeast of the post-Cistercian buildings, on the northern side of the road from Poznań to Murowana Goślina. It comprises the palace, located in the centre and facing the south-west, and the surrounding park. In front of the building is a spacious driveway. From the side of the road towards the palace there are two side alleys closed with classicist gate buildings from 1810. In the middle of the driveway there is a large pond. A landscape park stretches behind the palace. The surface area of the complex is about 20 hectares. To the north of the palace-park complex, behind the road to Bolechówek, there is the first farm yard. Its classicist buildings include the administrator’s building, stables, cowshed, barn, granary and a neo-Gothic smithy. The second courtyard is located opposite the palace, on the other side of the road, at a considerable distance from the residence. Stone buildings of the former brewery and a residential and farm building have been preserved here.

The late classical palace in Owińska was erected on the plan of an elongated rectangle, with central avant-corps from the front and garden. The interior has a two-bay layout with a rectangular hallway and a round vestibule in the axis of the ground floor and a spacious hall on the first floor. Two rectangular annexes were built on the side elevations. The palace is a two-storey building, erected on basements elevated above the ground level. It is covered by a high, hipped roof with eyelid dormer windows. The avant-corpses are covered with separate gable roofs, one-storey side annexes - with low gable roofs.

The walls are made of brick and covered with plaster. The part of the basement made of fieldstone was left unplastered. The roofs are covered with tiles, the roofs of the annexes - with tar paper. The cellars are covered with segmented vaults, the representative and residential interiors - with wooden ceilings with a soffit. The vestibule is covered with a tripartite vaulting.

The elevations in the basement part are made of fieldstones, above them - of plaster, on the ground floor they are rusticated, divided by string course and cornices below the windows. The basement windows are round, on the ground floor - rectangular, on the first floor - high rectangular windows covered with plaster surrounds. Large porte-fenêtre windows framed by Ionic columns in both upstairs avant-corpses. The front and garden elevations are fifteen-axial with four-axial side annexes and central one-axial avant-corps topped with triangular pediments. The upper parts of the avant-corpses are covered with rusticated lesene. The front avant-corps is preceded by a portico with four Doric columns surmounted by a balcony with a decorative cast iron balustrade. Formerly the main entrance to the palace was located here (now turned into a window). On the garden side in front of the avant-corps there is a wooden, once glazed veranda.

The interior of the palace has two sections with a strongly emphasized central axis, marked on the ground floor by a column vestibule and a round vestibule, and on the first floor by a spacious hall. The entire front floor suite of rooms was occupied by representative apartments. The rooms on the ground floor were used for residential purposes. The annex on the northern side contained the kitchen and servants’ rooms, on the southern side - the administrator’s apartment. Among the interiors, there is a representative entrance hall with four pairs of Doric columns, placed on high platforms along the side walls. Between the platforms there are steps leading to adjacent rooms. The columns support the entablature. The entablature and the finial of the other walls are decorated with a frieze painted in pastel colours (garlands, oval medallions with acanthus lilies). On the plafond in the middle there is a painted rosette-sun, on the sides - shells. Behind the hallway there is a round vestibule, open to the garden, covered with a tripartite ceiling with a rosette in the middle. The vault is decorated with painted stars and motifs of peacocks among floral threads on the rim. The walls of the vestibule are divided by wide pilasters that embrace conch niches that once held statues. On the eastern side there is a representative single flight staircase.

The residence is surrounded by a landscape park, once surrounded by a brick wall (the wall was dismantled after 1945), with numerous old trees, including whitewoods, ash trees, lime trees, maples, oaks, hornbeams, chestnut trees, sycamores, larches, and spruces. The main axis of the park is marked by the palace, the pond in front of it and a large clearing behind the residence, surrounded by diverse vegetation. The commonly used lawn in front of the driveway has been replaced with a sheet of water, enriching the composition by reflecting the palace in the water. Two alleys, once planted with birches, now with lindens, lead from the south-west towards the residence. The entrance to the palace is through two symmetrically located gates. These are brick, plastered buildings, closed with arcades, framed with pilasters, topped with triangular pediments. On either side of each of the gates are lower, square, rooms, covered with triple-pitched roofs.

Visitor access. The site can be accessed from the outside.

Compiled by: Krzysztof Jodłowski, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Poznań, 10.11.2017

Bibliography

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