Castle in Kornik

Kornik, located in the vicinity of Poznan, is a small town situated 20 km south-east from Poznan. A 14th century castle built by the Gorka family owns its present English Neo-Gothic shape (arch. Karol Schinkel) to Tytus Dzialynski, a great patriot fighting for the independence of Poland in the 18th-19th centuries. He was the one who much enlarged the collection of art known as the Kornik collections. In 1924 Wladyslaw Zamoyski, descendent of the Dzialynski family, donated the Kornik lands to the Polish state, thus creating the so-called Kornik Foundation. At present the Kornik castle is considered to be a very interesting museum with valuable collections of historical and national mementoes, Polish and foreign arms and armour, precious paintings by Grottger, Norblin, Bacciarelli, copies of Rubens’ works, period furniture representing different epochs and styles. The famous Kornik library contains over 350,000 volumes, books, old prints, manuscripts, among them one by Napoleon Bonaparte. The castle’s large park-arboretum comprises over 2,500 species and varieties of trees and shrubs, the largest collection of that kind in Poland.