Poland · 13th century
Tower house in Stara Łomnica – a historic 13th-century tower house in the village of Biestrzyków, in Poland, in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Wrocław County, Gmina Siechnice.
The residential and defensive tower, known as a knight's tower, was built of brick in the Middle Ages (13th or 14th century), with walls 2.2 m thick, and is first mentioned in 1411. Originally it had two upper storeys, was surrounded by an embankment and a moat, and was built on a rectangular plan, with a chapel on the ground floor. It was the property of the Wrocław cathedral chapter. In the 16th century an annexe – a kind of turret with a staircase – was added to the shorter side of the rectangle. In the following century one storey was added to the tower and a wing was added on the western side. In 1909 a 12th-century relief depicting a prophet was found here (now in the gallery of 12th–16th-century stone sculpture of the National Museum in Wrocław).
Despite considerable damage during the Red Army's assault on Festung Breslau in 1945, the walls of the brick tower survived undestroyed, thanks to which the tower endured another half century of progressive dilapidation. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries the ruins were bought by a private owner, who renovated it and, preserving its historic features, converted it into a dwelling house, beside which a pond – a remnant of the former moat – has also been preserved. It is one of two surviving medieval tower houses in the vicinity of Wrocław. The other is in Ślęza.
Around the tower house is a historic stronghold site with a moat.
Machine-translated from “Wieża mieszkalna w Biestrzykowie” on the Polish Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Tower house in Biestrzyków ranks #8,835 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #393 of the 398 mapped in Poland. Founded c. 1250, it is older than 67% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 1080 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. 8 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Świdnica, 44 km away. It is one of the 80 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Lower Silesia. See how Poland compares in the castle statistics.
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