Pidhirtsi Castle

Pidhirtsi Castle is located 23 kilometers from Brody in the village. Pidhirtsi, Brody district, Lviv region. Architectural monument of the late Renaissance and Baroque. It is one of the best examples in Europe of combining a Renaissance palace with bastion fortifications.

The castle belonged to the noble Polish families of Koniecpl, Sobieski, Zhevuski and Sangushki. It was designed by architects Guillaume Levasser de Beauplan and Andrea del Aqua on the instructions of Crown Hetman Stanislaw Koniecpolski.

The interiors of Pidhirtsi Castle impressed contemporaries with their beauty and splendor. Themed halls were named Chinese, Gold, Knight, Green, Mirror and Mosaic. Things belonging to King Jan III Sobieski were kept separately. The rooms were decorated with portraits of the owners of the castle, copies of Raphael, Rubens, Titian, Caravaggio. The dining room was decorated with a portrait of Hetman Koniecpolski on the ceiling and 72 portraits of prominent political and spiritual figures, a black marble table on which King John III was baptized.

In 1940, after the advent of Soviet power, the castle was transferred to the Lviv Historical Museum. During the Soviet-German war, the palace was badly damaged. In 1947 the museum was closed, and in 1949 a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients was built in it.

In 1997, a turning point in the history of the castle took place – thanks to the requests of the public and the work of Borys Voznytsky, it was transferred to the Lviv Art Gallery. In 2008, the castle in Pidhirtsi was included in the list of World Monuments Watch as one of the hundreds of monuments of the world, which is of exceptional value and is in danger of destruction.

Today the castle palace is open to visitors, entrance is paid.