Are you going to Karpacz for skiing or to Szklarska Poręba for the weekend? On the way, you pass palaces with turrets, baroque churches, parks that look like they were brought over from England. Maybe you'll stop for a photo. And then you keep going.
Few people wonder who built all this. For whom. And why exactly here, in a small basin at the foot of the Karkonosze Mountains.
The answer is surprising. The Jelenia Góra Basin is one of the most beautiful cultural landscapes in Central Europe - a region that for over a hundred years was the summer capital of the Prussian aristocracy. Most Polish tourists pass through this landscape without knowing the stories and heritage it hides. This text is about what lies beneath.
Hirschberger Tal - when the Jelenia Góra Basin was the summer center of Europe
The historical German name of the region was Hirschberger Tal - the Hirschberg Valley, today's Jelenia Góra. It is no coincidence that about twenty palaces and castles stand in one valley today.
On May 15, 1822, Prince Wilhelm, brother of King Frederick William III of Prussia, chose the castle in Karpniki (Fischbach) as his summer residence. From that moment, the entire royal family began to discover the basin. The ruler himself took a liking to Mysłakowice - the former property of Field Marshal August von Gneisenau, a veteran of Waterloo. In 1832, he bought this estate, and shortly after, he gifted the residence in Wojanów (Schildau) to his daughter Ludwika.
The king quickly brought his court to the place where he lived. Following the monarch came aristocrats, ministers, generals. Everyone wanted their own summer residence here - and so, from generation to generation, a mosaic of residences was created unlike anywhere else in Poland. Families such as the Hohenzollerns, Schaffgotschs, Radziwiłłs, and Czartoryskis established their palaces here. The gardens were designed by the greats - Peter Joseph Lenné, creator of Berlin’s parks, and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
The spirit of this is best conveyed by a letter from Marshal Gneisenau from Mysłakowice. Describing a reception for neighbors, he wrote: sixteen cows with bells tuned to two octaves were placed in the forest, and in the bushes, a clarinet player and several musicians playing horns were hidden. That was the rhythm of life in this valley - nature as a stage set, landscape as a work of art.
Schlesisches Elysium - why was this valley called the paradise of Silesia?
The residents and guests of the basin had their own name for it: Schlesisches Elysium - Silesian Elysium, the paradise of Silesia. It was not a marketing slogan. It was a word used by people who lived here and knew the wealth of the region.
The secret lay in the combination of three things: the wild mountain landscape of the Karkonosze, English-style designed parks, and residences from whose windows and terraces there was a view of the snow-covered Śnieżka. The creators of the palaces treated the entire valley as one large, subtly designed garden. Avenues were laid out, trees planted, temples of reflection built - all so the landscape would look like an inspired romantic painting.
Today this value is officially recognized: eleven residences with parks have been listed as Polish Historic Monuments as one of the most important garden landscapes on the continent. The idea that guided their creators at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries was to create Elysium on earth, a place of eternal happiness.
Warmbrunn and thermal resorts - how the Germans discovered Cieplice
Before the aristocracy discovered the valley for summer residences, one place attracted guests since the Middle Ages. Cieplice - Warmbrunn in German, meaning warm spring - is probably the oldest spa in Poland. The earliest document about the local hot springs dates back to 1281.
From the 14th century until 1945, the history of Cieplice was connected with one family - the Schaffgotschs, one of the most powerful families of Lower Silesia. They expanded the spa and attracted the elites of Europe. The guest list is impressive: Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1790, King Frederick William III with his wife in 1800, in the same year John Quincy Adams - later the sixth President of the United States - and in 1816 Izabela Czartoryska.
The Schaffgotschs gathered treasures here that few remember today. Their ornithological cabinet was considered the largest private bird collection in all of Europe. What you see today in Cieplice - the baroque palace, the spa park, fountains - are the last remnants of a world that disappeared from the map in 1945.
Wang Church - how a Norwegian church ended up in the Karkonosze
You stand before a wooden church on the slopes of the Karkonosze wondering if you are in Norway or Silesia.
The Wang Church was built at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries in the Norwegian town of Vang by the lake Vangsmjøsa. In the 19th century, it proved too small for the local parish, and the repair costs were too high - it was decided to sell it. In 1841, the monument was bought by King Frederick William IV for 427 marks. Thanks to the efforts of Countess Friederike von Reden from Bukowiec - a tireless benefactor of the region - the church was dismantled into parts, transported via Szczecin and Berlin, and then reassembled on the slopes of the Black Mountain in Karpacz, at an altitude of 885 meters above sea level.
The land for the construction was donated by Count Schaffgotsch from Cieplice. In 1842, the 12th-century Norwegian church stood in what is now Polish Karkonosze - and is probably the oldest wooden temple in the country. The entire structure was built using carpentry techniques without nails.
Palaces of the Jelenia Góra Basin - what hides behind the facades?
The modern name of the region - the Valley of Palaces and Gardens - is a translation of the German Tal der Schlösser und Gärten. Behind each facade hides a separate story, often a separate family.
Schloss Lomnitz (Łomnica Palace) is a canary-yellow palace on the Bóbr River, purchased in 1835 by a newly ennobled Prussian official who wanted to live next to the royal family. Schloss Fischbach (Karpniki Palace) is a neo-Gothic water castle, the summer seat of Prince Wilhelm. Schloss Schildau (Wojanów Palace) was the king’s gift to his daughter Ludwika, now the largest palace hotel in the valley. Each of these palaces was built by a specific person - a textile merchant, a Prussian aristocrat, a field marshal - and each bears marks of that history in its facade and park.
Tyrolean colony in Mysłakowice - when the king brought Alpine weavers
Driving through Mysłakowice, you pass Alpine houses with characteristic wooden porches. Where did they come from?
The story is this: In the 1830s, a group of Protestant Tyroleans had to leave their homeland due to religious persecution. They appealed for asylum to the Prussian king. Thanks to the intercession of Countess von Reden from Bukowiec - the same woman who brought the Wang Church - they found refuge in Mysłakowice. The king settled them on his land, and they built the Tyrolean houses that still stand there today.
There is also a royal extravagance for dessert. The heir to the throne, Frederick William IV, bought the massive jaws of a whale from a Wrocław woman and placed them by the edge of a pond in Mysłakowice as a kind of gate. The bones are still preserved today.
1945 - the end of one world and the beginning of another
And then, within a few months, this world ended.
The year 1945 changed the Jelenia Góra Basin irrevocably. The German population, living here for generations, was expelled. In their place came Polish settlers - many from the Eastern Borderlands, themselves expelled from their homelands. Two worlds existed side by side for a moment before one disappeared.
Palaces, churches, and parks remained. People left. New residents lived for decades among architecture whose history they did not know - because it was foreign, German, and the times were not conducive to exploring such topics. Many residences were turned into warehouses, schools, orphanages. Others simply fell into ruin.
How Polish researchers and private owners are saving the heritage of Hirschberger Tal
The real change came only in the 1990s. People appeared - Polish history enthusiasts, private owners, sometimes descendants of former families - who began to restore what had survived.
The palace in Łomnica (Schloss Lomnitz) was restored by descendants of pre-war owners who, after 1990, bought back the ruin and step by step returned it to its former glory. Today there is a hotel, museum, and cultural center. Schloss Fischbach, still a ruin in 2009, now welcomes guests again. In 2005, the Valley of Palaces and Gardens Foundation was founded, systematically rescuing more objects.
The heritage of Hirschberger Tal is not a closed past. It is an ongoing project in which Poles recover the history of a place that has become their home.
Pakoszów Palace - where history is a living everyday experience
One of the palaces that survived and still impresses with its architecture and history today is Pakoszów Palace - formerly Schloss Wernersdorf.
It was built in 1725, founded by a wealthy merchant involved in flax trade - the same commodity that brought fortune to the valley. The palace was both a residence and a manufactory: flax was bleached on the ground floor, and representative halls were on the upper floor. Frederick the Great visited here, and around 1800 - the same John Quincy Adams who visited Cieplice. After the war and decades of neglect, the palace was bought by a descendant of former owners and restored to its splendor, opening it as a hotel with history.
Staying at Pakoszów, you don’t watch the history of the Jelenia Góra Basin through a window. You become part of it.
Pakoszów Palace as a base for the historical route of the Jelenia Góra Basin
The palace hotel in the Karkonosze has one more advantage - it lies in the very center of everything you have read above. From Pakoszów Palace, you can set out on a day trip through the entire valley: Łomnica Palace in Łomnica, Wang Church in Karpacz, Tyrolean colony in Mysłakowice, Cieplice with traces of the former Warmbrunn. All within short driving distance.
Hotel Pakoszów Palace is not just accommodation in the Karkonosze - it is the key to understanding the region through which you previously only passed. You can read more about the palace as a boutique hotel in the Karkonosze in a separate post.
Plan your stay at Pakoszów Palace - a hotel with SPA in the Karkonosze with history in the background
The Jelenia Góra Basin has layers you cannot see in one day. You need time - and a good place from which to set out on sightseeing.
Pakoszów Palace - a palace hotel in the Karkonosze with SPA, a pool, and sauna - offers both. Spend the day on a historical route, return in the evening to the baroque interiors, dine in the former flax bleaching house, and relax in the palace SPA in the Karkonosze. The next morning, you set off again because there is more to discover.
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