My mom, my sister, and I have just recently come back from our month-long trip to Poland, and during the trip, we visited many famous castles! They were all really cool. Visiting such old, pretty, and historic buildings is awesome, but there were some I definitely liked more than others.
Here are my top 3 Polish Castles: Moszna Castle, Malbork Castle, and Wawel Castle.
Moszna Castle
Moszna Castle was built sometime in the 17th century and is located in the village of Moszna. It’s one of the first castles we visited during our stay in Poland, and was my favorite! It has 99 towers, 365 rooms, and is a combination of baroque, neo-gothic, and neo-renaissance style architecture. We only toured some of the rooms. The outside is definitely prettier and a lot more impressive than the inside, but it’s still fun to go in and see how super rich people lived then.
The last and most famous family who lived there was the Tiele-Winckler family. They lived in Moszna from 1866 to 1944, when they fled because the Red Army decided to occupy it. There’s a little cemetery in the forest where they’re buried. My favorite part of our visit was walking through the super pretty park & forest. Well, eating the best coffee ice cream ever in the castle restaurant was my favorite too. The castle has a hotel and restaurant where I got a fancy, super “smaczna kawa” with “lody”. The castle, the forest & meadow around the castle, and the big fountain in front were all very pretty. I really enjoyed our visit there.
Malbork Castle
The second castle on my list, Malbork Castle, is the biggest castle in the world!! It started being built around 1274 by the Teutonic Knights, and it reached its final form in 1406. We took an audio-guided tour of it, and the tour was about 4 hours long.
It was really cool to walk through such an old place with so much important history. Malbork Castle became the headquarters of the order’s Grand Master in 1309. It was the seat of the Teutonic Order for about 150 years. We went all over the castle and visited some cool spots like the Great Refectory, and St. Annes Chapel, which was the burial chapel of the Grand Teutonic Masters.
We also went to the museum, which has over 40,000 artifacts. We saw a bunch of old weapons and armor, as well as their amber collection. Malbork Castle was a Polish royal residence from 1466 to 1772, after the Teutonic Knights were defeated by Polish and Lithuanian armies. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. Malbork Castle is gigantic and full of history, visiting it was super great!
Wawel Castle
The third and final castle on my list, Wawel Castle, is said to have been established after the Polish prince Krakus defeated a dragon that lived in the caves below the castle. You can visit those caves, but we didn’t have the time to. We took an audio-guided tour through the royal apartments as well as multiple other exhibitions including the Crown Treasury, The Armoury, and a temporary exhibition of old porcelain figures. We also visited the Royal Gardens.
Every time we finished one of the exhibitions and went back outside we were blinded! It was a sunny day, and the castle & ground around us was all white! Like I said when I was speaking about Malbork, It’s so cool to think when you’re walking through those castles about how a bunch of royal and important historical people have walked right here too and were living their lives right here hundreds of years ago. Since the coronation of Władysław in 1320, all Polish kings except for Stanisław Leszczyński and Stanisław August Poniatowski were crowned in Wawel Castle. It was great to visit such an old and important place in Polish history.
Poland – a country with over 500 castles!
Visiting Poland was amazing, and going to all those castles was really cool. Learning all the history there, and stopping by very rundown, destroyed castles was fun. I’m sure there are plenty of other iconic Polish castles to see if we go back again! With over 500 castles in Poland, we got to see only a very tiny part of that world but in the end, it gave me a Bigger Picture of Polish history and my mom’s cultural background.
