Lubomirski Palace (Opole Lubelskie)

The present form of the palace is a reconstructed barracks, carried out after 1854. The earlier reconstructions have been obliterated. Today it is a large, three-storey building on a rectangular plan with prominent projections at the ends of the façade. The interior layout is two-bay, partly changed during the subsequent reconstructions and repairs. The interior décor has not survived. In the basement the vaults are preserved, with lunettes and barrel vaulting. The northern façade looking over the courtyard has thirteen bays, separated by pilasters with Ionic capitals (finials). The middle window (slightly wider than the others) on the first floor of the façade is a remnant of the eighteenth century main entrance door, approached by flights of stone steps. The south elevation - formerly overlooking the formal garden has fifteen bays with pilasters, but with Tuscan capitals. The ground floor is rusticated, creating a base for the building. There have been no archaeological excavations, and little is known about the former buildings which used to form a courtyard around the palace. Only an outbuilding to the south-east survives, which was turned into a hospital. It was one of Four buildings built in the eighteenth century to form a surrounding courtyard. On the foundations of outbuildings to the south-west one of the hospital buildings rises. There are no traces left of the northern outbuildings - the north-western one was demolished in 1996, the north-eastern much earlier. To the west of the palace a few old buildings the farm remain; and the granary from the late eighteenth century was converted into a cinema. A field hospital, built in the second half of the nineteenth century by the tsarist army and located south of the palace, was demolished in 2001. Also preserved is an eighteenth-century statue of St. John of Nepomuk, now in the hospital; it probably originally stood on a circular island in the ornamental pond on the north side of the palace. ==History==

Słupecki family A medieval castle with a moat formerly stood on the site, which was further surrounded by ponds including a fish pond on the eastern side. Sięgniew Słupczy was the owner of Opole in 1368. Opole was granted civic rights at the end of the fourteenth century, perhaps coinciding with the construction of the castle. The exact date is not known - documents were burned in the fifteenth century. King Casimir IV of Poland renewed the privilege in the years 1450 and 1478. The influence of the Słupecki family increased through the sixteenth century, and Stanislaw Słupecki, Castellan of Lublin, began collecting fine art paintings, and a large library. The Słupeckis maintained lively contacts with Western European thinkers and hosted many of them in Opole. From the sources it is known among others that Felix Słupecki corresponded with the Dutch Protestant jurist Hugo de Groot (Grotius) who, as an Arminian, was involved on the other side of the Calvinist–Arminian debate. Słupecki's extensive library contained a number of theological works, and he founded a Reformed Church school in Opole Lubelskie in 1598, with as its first head. George Słupecki, the last male descendant of the family, died in 1664. Opole passed into the hands of the Anglo-Irish-German pl:Butler family, the Dunin-Borkowski, and then Tarłó families by about 1690. Lubomirski family in 1785-1787 designed by Franciszek Degen The palace was inherited in 1782 by his nephew Prince Alexander Lubomirski, who wanted to create a cultural residential park similar to the Czartoryski palace in Puławy (the 'Polish Athens') a few miles away. , executed in Paris in 1794 He married Rozalia Czartoryski, and they had a daughter Princess Alexandra Francis Lubomirska. Rozalia was in Paris (with Alexandra, aged 7) during the Reign of Terror. She was arrested several times in Paris on espionage charges and was guillotined in 1794 aged 23. Alexandra was freed from the same prison where she had been held with her late mother, and returned to Opole. However, Polish discontent after the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 led to the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794. The Russians quelled the uprising, and after the Third Partition of Poland, Poland ceased to exist as a country for 123 years. The nearby palace in Puławy belonging to Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski was plundered utterly and burnt by the Russians for his part in the uprising. Alexandra's tutor in Opole around 1800 was Jean Vesque de Puttelange, an exiled former government official from the Habsburg Netherlands; his son Johann Vesque von Püttlingen (the composer 'J. van Hoven') was born in the palace. In 1804 she and her father moved to Habsburg-ruled Vienna where she married the orientalist, Count "Emir" Wacław Seweryn Rzewuski. ==19th century military use==

In 1847, Alexandra Rzewuska sold the Niezdowie grand villa to a judge, Kazimierz Wydrychiewicz. In 1854 she disposed of (or sold) the house and its contents to the Russian general Ivan Paskyévich, the Namestnik of the Kingdom of Poland since 1831. Many of the books in the library were donated to the Piarist seminary in Opole; after the Order was suppressed after the January Uprising, some of the collection ended up in the Hieronim Łopaciński public library in Lublin. After 1854 the Lubomirski palace was converted into a Russian military barracks, undergoing a severe redesign which included the loss of the mansard roof and the removal of the balustrades and tympanums; the third storey was heightened. The outbuildings were turned into a hospital, the last being demolished c2001. The former interior décor no longer survives. Further rebuilding took place in the 1940s and 1960s. The Lubomirski palace is currently used as a high school named after the national poet of Poland, Adam Mickiewicz. ==References==