Castle in Ossolin

he first known owner of the local lands was Jan of the Tór coat of arms, called Jasiek in documents. Having founded a village here, he called it Ossolin, the name was to come from Osa, the hero of the local tradition. Jan took the surname from his estate, giving rise to the great Ossoliński family. Probably in the fourteenth century, they erected a stronghold here, mentioned in fifteenth-century documents as castrum.

On the site of the medieval castle, in 1633, Jerzy Ossoliński, voivode of Sandomierz and Chancellor of the Crown, erected a Renaissance residence famous for its splendor and wealth according to the design of Wawrzyniec Senes. The castle consisted of four three-storey residential wings built of brick surrounding the courtyard. The bricks for the construction were fired on site from clay 

Ossolin Castle in a drawing by Alfred Schouppé from 1860

and loess, and the stonework of the castle was made of sandstone, which was brought from the village of Podolia near Opatów. In the corners there were round towers, probably relics of an earlier foundation. In the corner tower at the entrance gate there was a chapel. On the edges of the hill, the castle was surrounded by a perimeter wall, and the promontory was cut off from the rest of the hill by a dry moat, over which a bridge leading to the outer bailey was thrown. The whole was surrounded by bastion fortifications. The construction was completed in 1635. During the Swedish wars, the castle fortunately did not share the fate of many other Polish fortresses, it was spared damage.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, the castle was already strained by the passage of time, so the then owner Józef Salezy Ossoliński renovated it and surrounded both the walls of the residential wings and the perimeter wall with buttresses. It is possible that only one tower was left during this reconstruction.

In 1780, Ossolin passed into the hands of the Ledóchowski family, the neglected castle began to fall into disrepair. Around 

Photo from 1914

1800, it was probably no longer inhabited. In 1816, Antoni Ledóchowski ordered the destruction of the castle, which was still used as a granary and utility warehouse. After being blown up, only the cylindrical tower, the gate and the bridge resisted the damage. In 1831, the next owner of Ossolin was General Ignacy Ledóchowski, a participant in the national uprising.

The remains of the walls were a source of building material and road stone for subsequent owners. From 1901, the owner of the area with ruins was the Karski family. In the interwar period, Michał Karski placed a distillery in the castle area. During World War II, the castle walls still protruding above the ground were destroyed, and in 1944 the retreating German troops blew up the tower, which could be used as an observation point.

Currently, there are only overgrown rubbles here, which hide the vaults of the cellars. One arcade has been preserved of the bridge connecting the castle with the outer bailey, behind the bridge you can still see the remains of columns in the place where the portal of the entrance gate stood.