The Polish President’s Castle in Wisła

The Polish President’s Castle is a modernistic palace in the town of Wisła, built between

1929 and 1930 based on a design by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz for Ignacy Mościcki, the president of Poland; between 1931 and 1952, as well as since 2002 it has been the residence of the president of Poland.

In 1906 Fryderyk Habsburg, the archduke of Cieszyn, was so delighted with the richness of the forests in Beskidy that he ordered to construct a hunting mansion. A single-story building of larch, constructed in the Carpathian-Tyrolean style, was designed by the archducal builder Ernest Altmann, and built by a well-known company of Eugeniusz Fulda from Cieszyn.

Most of the people who came here, wanted to hunt in the forests of Barania Góra, mostly for deer. The guests of the archduke Fryderyk and his wife Izabella duchess von Croy-Dulmen included, among others, Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany with general Hindenburg, as well as

Karol I, the emperor of Austria with general Hotzendorf.

Shortly after the end of World War I and the degradation of the Habsburg Monarchy, in November of 1918, approximately 200 local highlanders robbed the mansion as an act of revenge for the abuse of the archducal forest guard. Not much later, the Cieszyn wealth of the archduke was nationalized. In the revived country of Poland, the mansion became the ownership of the Ministry of Agriculture, but the people of that Ministry had no idea how to take advantage of it. In 1927, the seym of Silesia decided to renovate the object and repurpose it for the residence of the President of Poland.