History
The castle was built around the mid-14th century, perhaps at the initiative of Kazimierz III the Great. Its first known owner was Przedbór of Brzezie, Marshal of the Kingdom of Poland, who received the local estate from the king. After Przedbór’s death, Ogrodzieniec returned to the ruler, but in 1386 King Władysław Jagiełło granted it, along with a vast estate, to the Kraków Cup-Bearer Włodek of Charbinowice of the Sulima coat of arms. This was likely a reward for his participation in the previous year’s embassy, in which along with other royal dignitaries, he traveled to Krewo in Lithuania to conclude a Polish-Lithuanian union.
In 1470, the castle was purchased from the Sulimczyk family by wealthy Kraków burghers, Imbram and Piotr Salomon. After them, Ogrodzieniec was owned by the brothers Andrzej, Stanisław, and Jan Feliks Rzeszowski, a Przemyśl parish priest and a Kraków canon from Przybyszówka, who had been a knight before his ecclesiastical career. In 1482, the Rzeszowski family exchanged Ogrodzieniec for the village of Zawiercie with Jan Pilecki. As a result, the castle became the property of the powerful Toporczyk family, who adopted the Pilecki surname. Around 1522, the Ogrodzieniec estates returned to the Sulimczyk family. They had incurred debts to the Kraków banker Jan Boner, and as a result, the castle changed hands again in 1523. The Boner family originated from Landau in Alsace. Initially, they moved to Wrocław in Silesia, and in 1483, Jan Boner settled in Kraków. A skilled merchant and banker, he quickly climbed the career: in 1493 he became the owner of a tenement house on Kraków’s market square, in 1498, he took a seat on the city council, and from 1515 he managed the Wieliczka salt mine. In 1522, he became the governor of Kraków and chief banker to King Sigismund the Old.
Between 1530 and 1545, Jan’s nephew, Seweryn Boner, burgrave of Kraków and salt mine administrator, and later castellan of Biecz and Sącz, carried out a major reconstruction of the medieval castle into a late Gothic-Renaissance residence. A northern wing was constructed, the southern wing was enlarged, and two towers wewre built. Also third gate tower was erected in place of the former gate. The expansion was continued in 1550-1560 by Seweryn Boner’s son, Stanisław, who built the western wing, installed the castle chapel, and added the so-called Hen’s Leg to the southern wing. With the completion of the reconstruction, Ogrodzieniec rivaled the splendor of Kraków’s Wawel Castle itself, whose Renaissance reconstruction the Boners had also participated in. In 1560, after Stanisław Boner’s death without an heir, his sister Zofia, wife of Jan Firlej, Grand Marshal of the Crown, inherited the estate. A year later, he began the next phase of Ogrodzieniec’s rebuilding. On the southeasternmost rock, he erected a corner bastion known as the boulevard. By 1576, when construction was completed, a second courtyard had been built, the Knights’ Court.
Ogrodzieniec was repeatedly destroyed by foreign armies. It was first captured in 1587 by the forces of Archduke Maximilian Habsburg, a pretender to the Polish throne. Then, in 1656, the residence was taken over by the Swedes. They caused no significant structural damages, but looted and ravaged the castle premises. These were renovated in 1663, when Andrzej Boner undertook a Baroque reconstruction. Ogrodzieniec suffered significantly more damages after a fire started in 1702 by the Swedish troops of Charles XII. From then on, the castle slowly fell into disrepair, further exacerbated by the taking of stones used to build the early modern church in Ogrodzieniec. The last inhabitants left the ruined castle around 1810.
Architecture
The first castle from the 14th/15th century occupied the summit of a rocky outcrop, part of a larger hill on the eastern side, dotted with limestone rocks. The most convenient approach was from the northwest, where the original structure may have been protected by an earthen rampart. Of stone was built a three-story structure with three rooms on the ground floor, possibly in the form of an elongated tower house, situated on the eastern rock. The castle also had a residential wing on the southern side, divided into four rooms in one line layout. Inside, in the courtyard, was a stone water cistern. Entrance to the courtyard was through a gate in the southeast section, located in a gap between two rocks.
During the expansion in the first half of the 16th century, after the demolition of the original eastern tower house, a four-story northwest wing was created, and the southern wing was enlarged to a height of three stories. Construction of stone cloisters began, but after a change of plans, they were completed as wooden multi-level porches supported by stone corbels. There were also partially carved into the rock utility rooms in his ground floor and in one of the corners there was an older 14th-century rainwater tank.
The southern wing was reinforced with two cylindrical towers. A third tower was built on the site of the former entrance. It had a square base with cylindrical top part. Above the passageway was a small room, another similar room above that, and on the third floor was the castle chapel. Above this, there were at least two more floors for defensive purposes, connected to the upper ward by porches in the crown of the defensive walls. A wooden drawbridge originally stood in front of the gate tower, spanning the ditch.
At the beginning of the second half of the 16th century, a fourth, two-story wing was built, enclosing the main courtyard from the west, and the castle was fortified from the south with the construction of a rectangular structure known as the Hen’s Leg. The three lower floors of this building served a defensive function thanks to thick walls and loopholes adapted for firearms. Later, the two upper floors were occupied by large chambers for residential and recreational purposes. After 1561, a defensive structure called the boulevard was also built in front of the southern tower, protecting the approach to the upper ward. The rock on which the boulevard was built was connected to the Hen’s Leg by a wall, dividing the two into a so-called economic courtyard. This wall was equipped with wooden porches at the level of the third floor and the crown, providing communication between the two structures.
The wide north-west wing had basements. On the ground floor there was a kitchen in which there was an openning allowing communication with the basement. Drinking water was taken from a well carved in the rock with a depth of almost 100 meters. Water collected in a reservoir in the courtyard was also used, right at the second entrance to the basement. Above the kitchen were the living rooms of the castle service, and on the second floor, the high chambers of the castle’s owners. The narrower northern wing, remodeled from the 14th/15th-century buildings, was situated on a high rock, originally accessible by ladders. Its horizontal layout was still three-part, while vertically it contained two or three storeys.
The spacious outer bailey on the eastern side of the upper ward, housed extensive economic facilities. It included a brewery, stables, and residential buildings for the garrison and servants. The bailey was surrounded by a stone wall set into limestone outcrops, particularly clustered in the northeastern and southeastern corners. Entrance to the outer bailey led through a quadrangular gatehouse in the northwestern corner, at the foot of the upper ward. Smaller gates were located in the southern and eastern curtain walls of the outer bailey. The Knights’ Courtyard that was built at the latest was surrounded by a wall extending from Hen’s Leg front wall, running about 20 meters down the slope to the corner, cylindrical turret, where it turned at right angles and after another 30 meters turned again reaching the rock on the western side.
Current state
The castle, preserved in the form of a picturesque ruin, is one of the most known and most visited castles on the Trail of the Eagles Nests of the Kraków-Częstochowa Jura. It has a small museum, souvenir shops and a viewpoint in one of the towers. Outdoor events, festivities, knights tournaments and concerts are often organized on the outside. After the recent renovation works, the tourist route through the castle was enlarged, reconstructing, among others, wooden cloisters of the economic courtyard. Unfortunately, instead of wood, in most of the stairs and passages were thoughtlessly used nasty metal structures. The opening hours of the castle can be checked on the official website here.
bibliography:
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Górski U.J., Zamek ogrodzieniecki w Podzamczu, Sosnowiec 1995.
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Kmiotek D., Ogrodzieniec, Dąbrowa Górnicza 2009.
Lachowska M., Zamek Ogrodzieniec w Podzamczu, „Wiadomości konserwatorskie województwa śląskiego”, 4/2012.
Leksykon zamków w Polsce, red. L.Kajzer, Warszawa 2003.