Borowa Palace

Borowa Palace in Borowa, Poland, is a country residence whose oldest fabric dates to the 16th century and which was originally built in the Renaissance manner. The house later became the principal seat of the von Schwerin family and underwent major remodelling in the 18th and early 20th centuries, so it figures in the local history as an aristocratic estate and, briefly during the Second World War, as a repository for cultural material from Breslau.

The locality itself appears in medieval records as Boriow in 1202 and as Borow in 1306. By the 1500s a moated, island manor stood here in the Renaissance style. In 1730 the estate passed into the hands of Heinrich Friedrich, Count von Logau and Altendorf. His daughter married Count Friedrich Albert von Schwerin, and between 1770 and 1786 Friedrich Albert had a two‑storey classicist palace built, probably incorporating parts of the earlier Renaissance house. Around the same time the building was altered, the defensive moat was filled, and later descriptions record Baroque elements added to the fabric.

The von Schwerin family kept ownership until 1945. Family members identified in later records include Leopold Count von Schwerin (1794–1863) and Friedrich Count von Schwerin (1826–1899). By about 1890 the Bohrau estate covered roughly 540 hectares; later records list Count Woldemar von Schwerin as the entailed holder (fideicommissary) of Bohrau and of the Friedrichstein property, with holdings recorded at several hundred hectares. A fire around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries prompted further rebuilding and the addition of a tower and extra wings. Between about 1905 and 1920 the palace was extended with a southeast annex and a square tower in work attributed to Count Woldemar von Schwerin.

During the Second World War provincial conservator Günther Grundmann stored prints, books, manuscripts and coin collections evacuated from Breslau (Wrocław) in the palace from 1943; part of those materials was sent west of the Oder in late 1944. After the war the Red Army occupied the building until October 1945. Many of the Breslau collections that remained at Borowa were later looted or destroyed by new inhabitants. In the postwar period the site hosted Soviet military personnel for some time, and in 1969 ownership passed to the State Agricultural Farm (PGR). The interior served for offices, communal rooms and as a school; a school continued to operate on the premises until 2005. The municipality sold the property in 2005. From 2007 the Jabłonowski family carried out a comprehensive restoration and conversion to a hotel and conference centre, and the renovated building reopened on 5 February 2009. Polish descriptions present the palace as an 18th‑century von Schwerin house later modernised in the nineteenth century to a classical‑modernist appearance and subsequently associated with the Jabłonowski family.