Liw Castle
| Liw Castle | ||
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| Creation time : | around 1400 | |
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg | |
| Conservation status: | Partly restored ruin | |
| Place: | Liw | |
| Geographical location | 52 ° 22 '24.7 " N , 21 ° 58' 10.4" E | |
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The ruins of Liw Castle are located in the village of the same name in the powiat Węgrowski of the Polish Masovian Voivodeship . In addition to the partially reconstructed castle ruins , the ensemble now includes a former Starostei , which is primarily used as a museum.
Castle
The castle, built in Gothic style from 1421, is located on the banks of the Liwiec , about 35 kilometers from Siedlce . The builder was the Mazovian prince Janusz I ("the elder", approx. 1346–1429), who had the brick castle built by the builder Niclos in place of an older wooden fortification on an artificial island in the middle of the marshy shore. The castle was laid out on an area of 80 by 80 meters, received two buildings (one of them called the "Big House") and about 6 meters high walls. Buildings and walls were raised several times. Under the last Mazovian Piast princess Anna Mazowiecka (approx. 1498–1557), the castle was expanded again between 1525 and 1536: the gatehouse was raised by another storey and the walls were raised to a height of 12 meters. Inside, a storage facility and a residential building (“small house”) were also built.
The next owner, the Polish Queen Bona Sforza, built an entrance gate from 1549 to 1570 and had the battlements removed. In 1657, 1700 and 1703 the castle was occupied and damaged by Swedish troops as part of the Second Northern War and other Swedish invasions. Then the facility fell into disrepair.
Since 2001 the "knight tournament for the ring of Princess Anna" has been held annually in the partially reconstructed castle.
Starostei
Towards the end of the 18th century, the Starost Tadeusz Grabian had a small baroque palace built as a Starostei instead of the former “Small House”. The building was damaged in a fire in the 19th century. The ruins were repaired by German occupation troops during the Second World War - allegedly because the occupiers wrongly believed that it was a castle belonging to the Teutonic Order . Since the 1960s there has been a weapons museum on the upper floor of the Starostei ("Muzeum Zbrojownia na Zamku w Liwie"), in which objects from the 15th to the 20th century are shown.
See also
literature
Agnieszka and Robert Sypkowie, Zamki i warownie ziemi mazowieckiej , ISBN 978-83-89986-53-5 , Egros, Warsaw 2009, pp. 54-58
Web links
- Museum and Castle website (in English)