5. Snowy Strolls on Sunday – Pszczyna

On Sunday, we traveled to the town of Pszczyna [psh-tch-ih-nah], and old town mentioned in historical documents as early as 1303, but founded much earlier. The best known highlight is the palace - a magnate residence constructed as a castle in the 13th century or even earlier, and rebuilt many times in various styles – gothic, renaissance, baroque and finally classicist. This last transformation converted the castle – which is usually constructed for defense purposes – into a palace.

The Palace has a rich history of residents – from being a stronghold for the Piast royal dynasty in its early stages, through the Krakow bishopric and several families, including the last one - the Hochberg-Furstensteins, as well as William II, German Emperor during WWI and… a Soviet war hospital for a brief period of time towards the end of WWII.

Before entering the palace, we briefly stopped in the main square to have a look…

…at the 18th century Evangelical Church…

… at the Roman Catholic Church, also mostly 18th century, although the first mentions of this location as a place of worship are from 1326…

…and also to say “hi” to Daisy, the last Hochberg princess (she looked really cold, so I shared my scarf with her for the photo.)

Then we entered the palace.

I’m going to share just a few pictures here – much more will be available on Picasa soon!




I visited the palace when we went on a field trip in the second grade, erm… about thirty years ago (feels a little discouraging when I realize how old I am), but I only remembered a few details. I was amazed again, looking down, at the main entrance floor made from tree trunks 2ft long placed vertically like this…

…and also looking up, most often at the vast number of chandeliers present in every chamber.


It’s hard to imagine how it was produced centuries ago, without the tools and the technology we have at our disposal today.

The second part of the trip took us to the bison park inhabited by bison, deer, roe deer, mouflon (a type of wild sheep), as well as a variety of fowl.



I need to mention that even though the word “bison” is frequently used to describe żubr, the bison-like animal that lives in Poland, it is really the European or Eurasian bison, also known as wisent (pronounced “vee-zent”, says Aunt Wikipedia). The two animals look superficially similar, but they have a different number of ribs and different horns; also, the wisents are taller, less hairy and less tamable than their American cousins. They exhibit different feeding and fighting behaviors as well.

Technically, we were supposed to stay away from them wild beasts, but if a she-deer comes and licks your coat…

Then we walked around the palace park covered with fresh snow…

…stopped by a little cemetery of one of the families that owned the palace…

...and finally paid a short visit to the Pszczyna skansen or, as the English translation there said, “the heritage park”. It’s an open-air museum showcasing old log-homes brought there from the whole region, as well as old tools and machines.


And this was it – lots of walking, lots of history, and also some deer residue to clean off my coat :)