Prince-Bishop of Wroclaw's Palace

this 750 year old castle is one of the most interesting and important private houses in Southern Poland. The beautiful countryside is great for biking, hiking, riding, swimming, skiing - and also for relaxing. It's a wonderful welcoming place for children Airbnb can only take bookings up to 16 people for "the whole property." If you want more people, we can do it. But there is an extra charge. Ask us before booking. Large groups, yoga, dance, workshops, reunions. parties, are our speciality The space A detailed and LONG description of our rooms and history follows. For Christmas or New Year, please contact us before booking. Upcoming events: 7th March. Concert by pianist Rami Bar-Niv. An all Gershwin programme. Why not book for a musical weekend? Weekend of 23rd July. The Piotrowice Nyskie International Rugby Festival. Send us a team! Or come as an individual player. We will find you a team. Men and women. 7s. Men’s XVs. August 3rd to 9th. Tango Week. 27th -31st August Blues Dance 7th -14th September. The Piotrowice Nyskie Piano Camp. For adult learners, all levels. Ask for details. Top teachers. The description below is LONG and detailed. Scroll down for a description of our apartments, rooms and other spaces. Here is a short summary Short summary: The house has existed since before 1300, but with later Renaissance, baroque and C19th elements, with 4 hectares of private park set in a small farming village, with the Czech Rychlebsky Mountains as backdrop. There are 12 bedrooms in the palace and two more apartments in the building opposite, four more bedrooms. That makes 5 kitchens. It is also possible to camp, indoors in barns or outside. We have a ballroom, ideal for parties - maximum 80 people. And Big Party Barn for very big parties, 200 or more. WiFi is delivered by optical fibre. This place is great for groups with an activity. Workshops, yoga, dance, painting, music making, bird watching, mushroom hunting. Our Yamaha grand piano loved by professionals. Family reunions, big number birthday parties. We can cater, or you can do it yourself. We have a classic car restoration business and some interesting old cars. The Czech border is 5 km distant for swimming, skiing, hiking, cycling. In Poland, Otmuchow is 6 km, there are 4 supermarkets. There is a Dino’s in Kalków, 2 km distant. Long description: Be aware before you book; not everything is perfect here. It’s a private family house. OK, so we have 12 bedrooms, plus four in the other building, but it is not a hotel, and that is how we like it. It's our home. We are slowly rescuing and restoring 750 year old heritage. Your booking helps us save what is possibly the most historically important and interesting private building in the region. It is first mentioned in 1305, and we guess built around 1250 or before. It gets rebuilt once every 100 years or so. We are just the latest rebuilders. If you are looking for a modern hotel, don't book here! Though our beds are comfortable and our bathrooms are modern. If Airbnb says we are booked, send us a message. We may have space. With couples sharing beds and some extra mattresses, we can take 40 people in the house, and there are other rooms in the village. With our barns - indoor camping on mattresses, and space to put up tents indoors if you want- we can accommodate over 100. Usually, if we have 16 or more people, we don’t take other bookings. The place is yours exclusively. (And ours, of course, we live here). Our unique selling point is – freedom! Within reason, you can do what you like. No curfew. Children can have fun and charge around. You can dance in the ballroom until the small hours. You can explore the house, go anywhere, there are no roped off areas or signs saying "No admittance." If you like physical work, we can offer unglamorous jobs like gardening and wood chopping. Some guests like to help. You get a kitchen with each apartment, but we can also cater if asked, for example at weddings, or quite often groups who are here for a purpose, maybe business, maybe a reunion, or for workshops. We have several rooms great for workshops. The ballroom is great for dance, we have an annual tango week, and a Blues Dance long weekend too. In 1660, was a Prince-Bishop of Wroclaw's private palace. He was one of many owners over the centuries. It’s great for a romantic break, for a small family, or for a large reunion. Maximum 80 people sitting down to eat in our ballroom in the palace, but up to 200 in the Big Party barn. Ideal too for company team-building – there is a lot do in the surrounding area, and obviously massive space here. Our WiFi runs off optical fibre to the village. The mobile signal is also strong. Examples of groups we have hosted, some of whom come back year after year, because they love it. A tango week (50 people), a German political party (20), international internet entrepreneurs (30 people), Blues Dance. Photography group (3 years). Lots of big number birthday parties, like 30th and 40th or 60th parties. Artists and creatives - 150 people, they used all our bedrooms, while some camped outside or slept in the big granary barn we have. The Piotrowice Nyskie International Rugby Festival, maybe Poland's best social rugby tournament. There is huge indoor and outdoor studio space for painters or craftspeople, including in our large barns and old granary. (We have 7 out-buildings, and some of them are ENORMOUS!). Musicians love our conservatory standard Yamaha C3 grand piano and ballroom. It’s a great place to write, rehearse, perform and record with a rewarding acoustic, helped by a wooden floor and beamed ceiling, and walls which aren’t quite parallel with each other, which means no disturbing resonances. Dancers love it here too. The ballroom floor dates from about 1750, is newly restored, and is perfect for dancing, luxurious in bare feet. Ideal for yoga too. The best dance floor in Silesia? Maybe! Just a note about winter. It can get down to -20 C outside. Inside, it's cosy, but lighting the wood burning stoves and keeping them going involves a little work. We can do it for you, though many guests from the city love the opportunity to light the fire themselves. We also offer gas and electric heaters. In 2012, our on-going restoration was short-listed for a prestigious Europa Nostra/European Union Award for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. We are proud of getting close, and we love to talk about our Big House Project with guests and to discuss the history. Jim collects historic maps. Set in a private park with magnificent, mature trees, and a grass tennis court, the surrounding countryside is glorious, with both flat and steep terrain for cycling, the Rychleby Mountains for hiking (skiing in winter), museums, adventure activities. Nearby in Zloty Stok is one of Europe's longest zip-wire and tree top agility courses and a gold mining museum (which won 2022's Europa Nostra Prize!). It’s a cycling paradise. Flat easy terrain with nice views for one kind of cyclist. Tour de France level difficulty if you want that. We can lend you an old bicycle for free. Or arrange some better ones for hire. On the Czech side just 20 km away, the Rychlebsky Stezky prepared mountain bike trails are for experts and beginners. The are 60 km of trails, some of the best in Europe, guests tell us. You can rent a top of the range mountain bike. There are some interesting small towns. And some wonderful swimming holes in old quarries. The closest is 6 km, we go with our children most days in summer. But, new here, we have built a natural swimming pool, no chemicals, filtered by plants. Fans of classic cars can look our collection over. We usually have about 15 cars, ours, and clients' cars. We don’t rent them out, although are thinking about that for the future. Old Bentley, Mercedes limo, 1960s Tatra and Skoda cabrio, Mazda MX5 from 1990. We have a classic car restoration workshop. For guests we have done small jobs – fixing parking dings – and whole projects where they left the car behind for a year. Ask in advance. Fixing a dent or bad paint work is best done over several days to allow layers to harden between coats. A car gives you independence, otherwise we shop every day and can take our guests to the town. Otmuchow (6 km) for provisions, or to the next village, Kałków (2 km – and we can lend you a bicycle). Local car hire is cheap. Shopping: Depending on the time of year, there may be organic vegetables from our garden available, and our chickens usually produce enough eggs for us to share. We can buy local honey, venison, wild boar. We can order home-made bacon, ham or sausages from a man in the village. We make jams and traditional pickles. Our chickens, geese, turkeys, guinea fowl wander where they want. Travel: The nearest airport is Wroclaw, a 75 minute drive. In a car, it is 5 hours from Vienna, Bratislava or Warsaw, 4 hours from Berlin, 3.5 hours from Krakow, Prague and Dresden, 2 hours from Katowice or Ostrava airports, 3 hours from Krakow. A bus is quicker than train from Wroclaw, train is better from Katowice and Krakow. We can meet you at Nysa station. On the Czech side 5 km distant at Horní Heřmanice, there's a small train (hourly departures) which will take you off into the mountains, or on to Brno, Prague, Vienna or Budapest if you want. Prague takes 6 hours, it's a beautiful trip for just 15 euros. We can also pick you up from Nysa station (20 km) or Otmuchów (6km). The History of Pitrowice Nyskie Palace: A "stone house" is mentioned in 1305, which means the house is likely to have been built before. 1250 or before is a reasonable guess. It is first mentioned as "Castro Petrowicz" (Castle Peterwitz) in 1369 – when it was probably a moated fortification, owned by a knight, with the duty (an “allodium”) to fight for the bishops when called upon. Quite likely it was destroyed by Hussite invaders from Bohemia in 1428 – every other castle in the district was destroyed at this time. The walls are mediaeval, but the fabric of the house mostly dates from after 1600, when it was in the ownership of a noble family called von Hundt. In our first summer here we discovered a stunning and important Renaissance painted ceiling in the ballroom, unique in Poland, dating from 1620. We think this painting was done for a visit by the King Friedrich V of Bohemia, who ruled this district at the time. We believe that one of the panels on the ballroom ceiling is of Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia (born Stuart) , "The Winter Queen." We know that in 1620 her husband, Friedrich V of Bohemia, visited nearby Nysa accompanied by Gabriel von Hundt, owner of our house. A few months before the start of the 30 Years War. Elizabeth was daughter of James I of England, and VI of Scotland, and was grandmother of the Britain’s George I. The chapel has artefacts from a little later, 1660s, when the house was owned by the Prince Bishop of Wrocław, Sebastian von Rostock, and it still serves as the village church – mass on Wednesday and Saturday evenings – the only such private chapel in Silesia. It has an impressive baroque altar, which we had restored with new gold leaf in 2012. The bishop left it to a nephew – we don’t know anything about him – then, in 1744, Baron von Wimmersberg acquired it, maybe as a reward for being on the right side in the Silesian War between Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria-Theresa of Austria, and it stayed in the family until a later Baron lost it in a game of cards to his estate manager, Julius Lorenz in 1858. The Lorenz family owned the house until 1945. They left with the approach of the Red Army. We have had contact with both the Wimmersbergs and the Lorenz family. And also with other pre-War inhabitants of the house and village and have many stories. During Polish communist times the house was used by five families from the local collective farm (PGR), but was badly neglected. There was also a kindergarten and the village hall. An investor bought it in the 1990s but did little, only since Anna and I started rescuing it from dereliction in 2007 has its beauty once more become apparent. Conservation work continues, and will probably never end! It’s a life’s work, possibly for our children too. If you are lucky, your visit might coincide with work by a skilled conservationist. Activities There are plenty of action-adventure activities nearby, but the house is quiet, ideal for winding down from City stress. We find that many of our guests do a lot of sleeping. It is an unusually peaceful place. Our guest flats - with fully equipped kitchens - are beautiful, and give you a sense of history when you stay, with exposed stonework, and old wooden beams. Children love it too. We have six, ages 20 down to 11 and they are so lucky to have grown up here. The freedom to explore the buildings and park, build dens, look at the animals, climb a tree or a stack of straw. Make a noise, kick a football, ride bikes, charge about, go searching for frogs and hedgehogs and all in relative safety. Our own natural swimming pool is suitable for small children if supervised! It has a large shallow play area, but also a section for doing laps if you a little serious about your swimming. Accommodation: Detailed description of our accommodation With a bit of sharing, and using other rooms in the village, we can take a group of up to 50 people. We have extra folding beds, air beds and children’s cots. If your group doesn’t mind mattresses in the attic, then 50 people. All flats are heated by ecological wood-burning stoves. On hot summer days, the house is very cool inside. Better tan air conditioning! Flat 1 Location: downstairs, off the internal courtyard. Mostly original wooden floors, apart from a marble area with underfloor heating History: this was the house-keeper’s flat many years ago. Bedroom 1: double bed Room 2: two single beds Room 3: a large living room with two double sofa beds Living area, kitchen, with underfloor heating and wood burning stove Marble bathroom with underfloor heating. Separate toilet Faces West and looks over the pond Flat 2. The Old Kitchen Flat Location: downstairs, off the internal courtyard. It has a view over the park. It has a wood burning stove, with gas and electric heaters if needed in winter, and underfloor heating in the bathroom History: this used to be the castle kitchen. Room 1: large living room and basic kitchen, then, through an arch, an area with double bed in a separate area, and the bathroom and toilet there too. Room 2: a separate room through a door. The room can be completely separated from the apartment. It has its own independent door to the courtyard. Our unique bendy floor boards with oak from our own park. The Hobbit Room, we call it. Faces North and looks over the park Flat 3. The Arch Room Location: downstairs, off the courtyard. It’s suitable for couple, or a couple with small children, all in the same large, arched room, with its own bathroom and toilet. There’s a double bed and we sometimes put extra beds in there. There is no kitchen, you can use the one upstairs. Other rooms upstairs The New Apartment It's at the back of the house, facing West. An apartment (no kitchen) with two bedrooms with double beds. And a large room with five or more single beds. There's space to add extra single beds, nd make it into a small dorm for 10. This apartment has three toilets and two showers. Upstairs near the ballroom. Built 2024. Our ping-pong table is there, also table football. The Master Bedroom: Upstairs in the palace is a very large bedroom with a large bathroom en suite with a huge bath. Parquet floor. There is some antique furniture. There is also a balcony. The Safe Room: through double doors from the master bedroom is the Safe Room, so called because it has the old house safe in it. It’s a big room, wit a huge double bed. We quite often put extra beds in there for guests. Wooden floor. The Sun-dial Room: from the Safe Room through more double doors, and next to the upstairs skitchen Called the Sun-dial Room because it is on the corner of the house with the sun-dial. Three single beds there. Parquet floor, high ceilings with historic wooden beams. The Sun-dial Room is next to the upstairs kitchen The Tower Room The tower has been made into a bedroom. It has its own bathroom and toilet underneath. Ideal for a couple, or a family with small children who would enjoy the adventure of sleeping in a tower. Other accommodation, not in the palace Flat 4 Location: is not in the palace but in the building opposite, with a view onto the palace. Décor is modern. It’s basic accommodation, we do not make high claims for it! Room 1: A large living room with two double sofa beds Room 2: A small bedroom with a double bed Kitchen with a table and a nice view of the palace. There is a traditional wood burning cooker, and a gas cooker The bathroom and toilet are together. There is a washing machine Flat 5 Location: also in the building opposite with a view over the palace. It's been modernised. Just one bedroom, but it's large. The upstairs kitchen in the palace is very large with historic beams, original oak parquet. It's great for communal cooking, some groups like to cook together. Formerly it was a grand salon. We use it for catering to our larger groups. Up to 80 people can dine in the ballroom. In the ballroom is an excellent Yamaha grand piano, the best instrument in the region, regularly maintained by the top piano technician from Wroclaw, and much loved by our visiting musicians. The room has a good acoustic for all sorts of music making and we often hold concerts there. There is also a lot of clean floor space in the attic. Members of a large party can camp up there. Popular with children… There is dormitory space in the barns too, and larger groups often put their tents in the park, or sleep in camper vans. There are other rooms in the village. Single and double rooms in private houses. Guest access We don't restrict guests. There are no "roped off areas" in this house. What's the point of staying in a castle if you can't go exploring the tower and the cellars and the barns? Freedom is what makes this place different. During your stay We like to meet our guests. Airbnb is wonderful for meeting interesting people and some have become good friends and regular visitors. I like to show people around and explain our ongoing Big House Rescue Project. I respect guests's privacy - some prefer to be left alone - so if you'd like "The Tour," you should approach us. Invite us in for a beer if you want to. Often people want to know how we ended up in a place like this and why we left London. There’s huge outdoor space and barns, ideal for going a little wild if you want to. Kids love it Other things to note This is an intimate place for a couple, or a family but perhaps this house is best of all for parties. Including business-related team-building – the informality suits young groups. Or, maybe for a Big Number anniversary, we’ve almost become specialists in 30th to 60th birthday parties, family reunions (your grandparents will be fine here) and random gatherings of friends (20 years since you went to university?). We like these occasions, it gives us the chance to meet the guests. We do the cooking if asked or help out. There are local caterers too. Big groups like the freedom we give them to do more or less what they want, the fact this is not a hotel, it’s a home. We have experience of parties for up to 200 in the Big Party Barn too. From, time to time we do weddings, and 80 can people sit for dinner in the ballroom. There is other accommodation locally for big groups, and also space for tents, and dry indoor camping in our barns (we have 7 enormous buildings). The most we have had stay here is 200. We love to meet classic car people. We have a classic car restoration business in one of the barns, and have a side-line in fixing the scratches and little bumps that cost too much to do in Germany or Britain.