Castle in Ćmielów

efore 1388, the castle together with the village of Sczmelow was sold by the chamberlain of Dobrzyń Mikołaj and his brother cupbearer Marcin for 6000 grzywnas to the Kraków chamberlain Gniewosz. This is confirmed by a document signed in 1388 by Queen Jadwiga. The next known owner of the estate was Dersław de Sczmelow in 1415.

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the castle was in the hands of the Szydłowiecki family. In 1493, the Radom castellan Stanisław Szydłowiecki died, and Ćmielów, which 

Aerial photo, photo by ZeroJeden, VII 2020

was his property, passed to Jakub. He was the royal treasurer and starost of Łęczyca. In 1505, Ćmielów received Magdeburg city rights on his initiative, covering the area of the castle village and the neighboring Szydłów.

In 1509, the Ćmielów estate came into the possession of Mikołaj, and the next owner, Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, in the years 1519-1530, using the site of the existing castle, erected a new Renaissance building from scratch, the ruins of which exist to this day.

The castle consisted of two parts. On the islet of the pond, the main section was formed by two parallel buildings connected from the north by the chapel building and from the south by a curtain wall. On the shore of the pond on the south side, buildings of the outer bailey were erected, which surrounded the courtyard. Originally, the outer bailey probably had at least three wings and the courtyard could only be open from the side of the pond. The entrance to the outer bailey led through a three-storey massive gatehouse.

The next owners of Ćmielów in the second half of the 16th century were the Tarnowski 

photo by ZeroJeden, VIII 2005

family, then the Ostrogski family, who leveled the banks of the pond to the shape of a rectangle and surrounded it with a four-sided perimeter of bastion fortifications, but it was a big mistake to leave the outer bailey unprotected by an earth rampart.

During the Swedish wars in the mid-seventeenth century, the castle was probably conquered by the invaders without much effort, and leaving it they probably caused significant damage. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the castle was in the hands of the Wiśniowiecki family. The greatest damage was suffered by the castle at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they were so serious that the nineteenth-century ? Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland? He describes it as the abolition of the castle. After the Wiśniowiecki family, the castle became the property of the Sanguszko family, and in 1753 ? Małachowski. They renovated the chapel on the island in 1773, but the castle in 1800 definitively ceased to serve residential functions. The buildings of the outer bailey were used to adapt it to a brewery. During World War II, the Germans used the gate tower as a military hospital.

Today, only the remains of the castle buildings on the island remain, the walls of considerable height that once housed a chapel. The outer bailey is better preserved, the walls of the gatehouse are preserved in their entirety, and the buildings added to it ? up to the height of one storey without a roof.