Pidhirtsi Castle: example of the shift from fortress to palace
I decided to write more publications about Ukrainian castles. Many readers liked and shared the article about the Castle in Olesko. So in this article, I`ll tell you about another Ukrainian castle. It is situated in Pidhirtsi (Lviv region) quite near to Olesko.
On the hill in the middle of the plain
The virtual tour to the castle
This castle stands on the vast and picturesque Brody Plain near the village of Pidhirtsi. The distance from Lviv is 89 km (approximately 56 miles) eastwards.
The castle was built by the order of Stanislav Konetspolskiy at the place of Pidhoretsky`s manor during 1635–1640 ears.
Castle has a long and dramatic history and was rebuilt many times. The first architects were the Frenchman Guillaume Levasseur de Beauplan and the Italian Andrea del Aqua.
Church of the St. Joseph in Pidhirtsi (3D tour)
Sidenote about Guillaume de Beauplan
By the way, Guillaume de Beauplan built another fortress in Ukraine. It was Kodak fortress near Dnipro (and quite near the place where the author of this article lives).
He was not only a military engineer but also a cartographer and what we would call ethnographer.
He left us the map of Ukraine (with this word used for our lands)
Title
Delineatio generalis Camporum Desertorum vulgo Ukraina : cum adjacentibus provinciis
Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7100.ct000383/?r=-0.094,0.368,1.303,0.5,0
and book called Description of Ukraine
[Description d’Ukranie, qui sont plusieurs provinces du Royaume de Pologne. Contenues depuis les confins de la Moscovie, insques aux limites de la Transilvanie. Ensemble leurs moeurs, façons de viures, et de faire la Guerre. Par le Sieur de Beauplan. — A Rouen, Chez Jacques Cailloue, 1660.]
Source https://odnb.odessa.ua/rarities/item/47?lang=en#view
Getting back to Pidhirtsi Castle
The castle was built as a place to rest for Stanislav Konietspolski
Stanislav Konietspolski
The castle combines Renaissance architectural features with bastions. It was built of brick and stone in the form of a square whose side is 100 meters.
In XVII ct. palace in the castle has only two floors while now it has three.
The castle and park in the XVII century. Source
Together with the castle, the park was laid out nearby. We don`t know who was the main gardener.
From 1648 to 1655 the castle was heavily damaged during the Ukrainian rebellion led by Bogdan Khmelnitskiy (Ukrainians call it Liberation War, Poles call it Civil War)
In 1914–1920, the castle was occupied by the army of Russian Empire for 1 year and 7 months; the army of Austria-Hungary for 1 year and 7 months (during this time, the Emperor Franz Joseph I and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany stayed in the castle); the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic for 7 months; and the Bolsheviks for 6 weeks.
During the Second World War, the castle was a hospital for German soldiers. Then for several years, it was a museum, but it was liquidated.
The castle was soon used as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. But in 1956 another fire broke out here. After the reconstruction in 1960, it still has been used as a sanatorium.
Finally, in 1997 Pidhoretsky Castle became the unit of Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery.
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