Opening hours: Closed Mondays; open Sundays and public holidays 9am-5pm; all other days 9am-2:30pm.
The castle is one of the most valuable and at the same time one of the most impressive pieces of secular Renaissance architecture in Poland. It is famous most of all for its beautiful cloistered rectangular inner courtyard (which has given it its nickname, "Little Wawel"), its unique portals and the richly decorated attic on its front elevation. It was built for the Polish aristocrat Jedrzej Leszczynski, probably by the Italian Santi Gucci, the royal court architect and sculptor. Later owners of Baranow made improvements to it and reconstructed it, entrusting the work to famous artists and architects of the time, including Jan Baptyst Falconi (stucco work attributed to him has survived in one of the towers) and Tylman of Gameren, who in 1695 designed rich Baroque carvings for the interiors of the first floor and added a picture gallery to the west wing, supported by the open arcades of the ground floor. The castle was destroyed twice by fire, and was also damaged badly during the Second World War and the first postwar years. Although nothing remained of its interiors, the building itself survived. In 1953, the reconstruction of Baranow Castle got underway, which was finished in 1968, returning the historic building to its former glory.
The museum housed in the castle's interiors is compromised of rooms decorated in period furnishings, and with paintings of the Italian school and portraits of the magnates. There are archaeological and geological exhibits in the basements rooms, including mammoth bones, decorations and a human skeleton from the Bronze Age, vessels from the Roman period, and an exhibition describing how sulphur is extracted and processed. The unusual combination of a museum of castle interiors with an industrial and technological exhibition is the legacy of the Museum of the Sulphur Mining Region that was housed here from 1967-1997.
Muzeum-Zamek w Baranowie Sandomierskim
ul. Zamkowa 20
39-450 Baranów Sandomierski
Region: podkarpackie
Phone: (+48 15) 811 80 40; 811 80 39; 811 85 04
Fax: (+48 15) 811 80 63
WWW: www.baranow.com.pl
Email: muzeum@baranow.arp.com.pl
