Royal Castle Bobolice

A border fort that became a village

Bobolice is a small village in the middle of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, among limestone rocks. The castle’s own history page says the village exists because the castle does. King Casimir the Great built the fort in the mid-14th century, the Polish text says “in the middle” of that century and the English history page says “the early 14th century”. Both pages put it in the chain of Jurassic strongholds that watched the kingdom’s western border toward Silesia, the line later called the Eagles’ Nests. Craftsmen, traders and farmers settled with it. Under the walls there was a smithy, a brewery, an inn and other farm buildings. At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries the place was still royal property. It then passed through the Szafrańcowie, the Krezowie, the Myszkowscy and the Męcińscy. The Lasecki family owns it now.

The same pages treat the Swedish Deluge as the break. The German history page dates that war to 1655–1660 and says the castle began to fall into ruin afterwards. The English page misdates the Deluge to the 16th century. The Polish page is the one that matches the German dates, so the visit story here follows the Polish and German texts: after the Deluge the fort decayed. King John III Sobieski, on his way to Kraków to gather the army before the relief of Vienna, camped under these walls. The Polish text says his company had to sleep in tents. The English text says he spent a night in a tent below the castle. After that the ruin got worse. In the 19th century a treasure was found in the cellars, and treasure hunters finished the destruction. The hotel catalogue says some people still believe the main hoard lies in a tunnel toward Mirów Castle. That is printed as a belief, not as a find.

What the reconstruction put back

At the end of the 20th century the Lasecki family took on the rescue. The catalogue says that after years of research and restoration the castle opened again, and it counts 12 years of work. A later castle page on the same site says the reconstruction ran for 13 years. Rooms, halls and chambers were rebuilt so a visitor could see the fort as it was argued to have looked in its strongest years. The castle calls itself one of the symbols of the Jura. Mirów, a short walk away, was begun under the same king as a small stone watchtower and grew into a magnate house, then suffered the same Deluge. The path between the two castles is described as about half an hour, along the rocks of the Mirów-Bobolice ridge, on a track the site says kings used. A legend on the catalogue page, again marked as legend, has two brothers, Mir and Bobol, a murder, and a princess walled into the linking tunnel. The site calls her ghost the White Lady and says she looks toward Mirów from the Bobolice walls.

The practical season is on the castle page, and it is narrower than a summer day-trip habit. From November to February the castle is open for visits Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00–16:00. Entries with a member of staff are every half hour. The last entry is 15:30. An older line in the hotel catalogue said November to March, Saturday and Sunday 10:00–17:00, and other days only for groups of at least 20 booked by phone. The castle page is the later rule for the cold season and is the one to follow until the site says otherwise. Wedding photographs need a separate consent and a fee, booked with reception at +48 34 328 80 02 or rezerwacja@hotelzamekbobolice.pl. The catalogue also says photography is forbidden on the whole site, with the word “photography” in a broken sentence, so ask at the gate what that ban still covers. The address block is Hotel Zamek Bobolice, 42-320 Niegowa.