The Lublin Castle ( pl, Zamek Lubelski) is a medieval castle in

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, adjacent to the Old Town district and close to the city center. It is one of the oldest preserved royal residencies in Poland, initially established by High Duke

Casimir II the Just Casimir II the Just ( pl, Kazimierz II Sprawiedliwy; 28 October 1138 – 5 May 1194) was a Lesser Polish Duke of Wiślica from 1166–1173, and of Sandomierz after 1173. He became ruler over the Polish Seniorate Province at Kraków and thereby Hig ...

. Its contemporary

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

appearance is largely due to a reconstruction undertaken in the 19th century.

History

The hill it is on was first fortified with a wood-reinforced earthen wall in the 12th century. In the first half of the 13th century, the stone

keep A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in c ...

was built. It still survives and is the tallest building of the castle, as well as the oldest standing building in the city. In the 14th century, during the reign of Casimir the Great, the castle was rebuilt with stone walls. Probably at the same time, the castle's Chapel of the Holy Trinity was built as a royal chapel. In the first decades of the 15th century, King Władysław II commissioned a set of

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...

es for the chapel. They were completed in 1418 and are preserved to this day. The artist was a Ruthenian, Master Andrej, who signed his work on one of the walls. Because of their unique style, mixing Western and

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or "canonical") ...

influences, they are acclaimed internationally as an important historical monument. Master Andrey Ladislaus II Jagiello kneeling before the Virgin Mary

Master Andrey Ladislaus II Jagiello kneeling before the Virgin Mary

Under the rule of the

Jagiellon dynasty The Jagiellonian dynasty (, pl, dynastia jagiellońska), otherwise the Jagiellon dynasty ( pl, dynastia Jagiellonów), the House of Jagiellon ( pl, Dom Jagiellonów), or simply the Jagiellons ( pl, Jagiellonowie), was the name assumed by a cad ...

the castle enjoyed royal favor and frequent stays by members of the royal family. In the 16th century, it was rebuilt on a grandiose scale, under the direction of Italian masters brought from

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

. The most momentous event in the castle's history was the signing in 1569 of the

Union of Lublin The Union of Lublin ( pl, Unia lubelska; lt, Liublino unija) was signed on 1 July 1569 in Lublin, Poland, and created a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. It replaced the pe ...

, the founding act of the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi-confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Crown of the Kingdom of ...

. As a consequence of the wars in the 17th century (

The Deluge The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is the Hebrew version of the universal flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microc ...

), the castle fell into disrepair. Only the oldest sections, the keep and the chapel, remained intact. After Lublin fell under Russian rule following the territorial settlement of the

Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna (, ) of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon B ...

in 1815, the government of

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

, on the initiative of

Stanisław Staszic Stanisław Wawrzyniec Staszic (baptised 6 November 1755 – 20 January 1826) was a leading figure in the Polish Enlightenment: a Catholic priest, philosopher, geologist, writer, poet, translator and statesman. A physiocrat, monist, pan-Slavist ...

, carried out a complete reconstruction of the castle between 1826 and 1828. The new buildings were in the English neo-Ggothic style, completely different from the structures they replaced, and their new purpose was to house a criminal prison. Only the keep and the chapel were preserved in their original state. The castle was a prison for the next 128 years: as a Tsarist prison from 1831 to 1915, in independent Poland from 1918 to 1939, and most infamously during the

Nazi occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...

of the city from 1939 to 1944, when between 40,000 and 80,000 inmates, many of them Polish resistance fighters and Jews, passed through. Just before withdrawing in 1944, the Nazis massacred its remaining 300 prisoners. After 1944, the castle continued as a prison of the Soviet secret police and later of the People's Republic of Poland and, until 1954, about 35,000 Poles fighting against the new communist government (especially ''

cursed soldiers The "cursed soldiers" (also known as "doomed soldiers", "accursed soldiers" or "damned soldiers"; pl, żołnierze wyklęci) or "indomitable soldiers" ( pl, żołnierze niezłomni) is a term applied to a variety of anti-Soviet and anti-communist ...

'') passed through it, of whom 333 died. In 1954, the castle prison was closed. Following reconstruction and refurbishment, since 1957 it has been the main site of the Lublin Museum.

Gallery

File:Dombeck Arrival of General Zajączek to Lublin (detail) 02.jpg, View of the castle in 1826 File:Lublin Castle 5 Lublin 28.jpg, Main entrance gate of the neo-gothic part of the building File:Lublin zamek 2009.jpg, The keep and the Holy Trinity Chapel seen from the castle's courtyard File:Dziedziniec zamku w Lublinie.jpg, Courtyard of the castle

History

Gallery

See also