Moszna Castle

Moszna Castle rises above the flat fields of Upper Silesia like an illustration from a book of fairy tales: a white mass crowded with spires, pinnacles and towers of every size, ninety-nine in all, around 365 rooms. It is one of the most extravagant country houses in Poland, and its charm lies precisely in its excess, a residence that blends Baroque, Gothic Revival and Renaissance Revival into a single eclectic silhouette, stretched upward by its forest of turrets.

The heart of the building is an older Baroque palace, first described in 1845, when the estate belonged to the Seherr-Thoss family. In 1866 it was bought by the industrialist Hubert von Tiele-Winckler, one of the leading industrial magnates of Silesia, and Moszna became the family's main seat. A fire in 1896 partly destroyed the palace, and his son Franz Hubert rebuilt it in two phases: by 1900 the burnt centre had been restored and a Gothic Revival east wing with an adjoining orangery added; between 1912 and 1914 came the west wing in Renaissance Revival style. The count's arms still crown the gable of the south front. Emperor Wilhelm II came to hunt here in 1911 and again the following year. The family lived at Moszna until 1945; the brief Soviet occupation at the end of the war did more harm to the interiors than the fighting itself. Afterwards the castle housed a series of institutions, became a sanatorium in 1972 and later a centre for the treatment of neuroses. Local lore once linked old cellars in the garden to a Templar stronghold, an idea historians regard as unfounded.

The castle is surrounded by a landscape park of more than 100 hectares that merges into fields, meadows and woodland, with centuries-old oaks and large plantings of rhododendrons and azaleas. Its one formal axis runs from the gate along avenues of oak, horse chestnut and lime, the last flanked by twin canals, while a pond to one side holds an islet the owners called Easter Island, reached by a Chinese-style bridge. Each spring the flowering of the azaleas gives its name to an annual music festival held at the castle, and the chapel serves as a concert hall. A state stud farm was established on part of the former estate in 1948.

Getting there

Moszna lies between Prudnik and Krapkowice, about 14 km from Krapkowice and roughly 30 km south of Opole. The nearest airport in Poland is Copernicus Wrocław Airport (WRO), about 97 km away; Leoš Janáček Airport Ostrava (OSR) in the Czech Republic is slightly closer in a straight line, at about 86 km.