Chichy Palace

Chichy Palace in Chichy, Poland, is an early 18th-century country house erected in 1718 by local noble owners. Built on the site of an earlier knightly residence, the building first reached form in the Baroque era and later acquired Neoclassical traits, and it served for centuries as a landed family seat and local centre of social life.

The site was associated with local gentry as early as the 16th century; a 1539 document names Franciszek von Nechern as owner of part of the locality that included the place where the palace stands. In 1718 the present palace was constructed close to the Iławka stream on the footprint of that older manorial holding. A pictorial record made around 1740 by F. B. Werner shows a Baroque country palace with a park attached to the building’s south side, indicating its eighteenth-century appearance and landscaped setting.

Around 1840 the house was substantially altered, taking on Neoclassical features and enlarged by the addition of a northern annex covered by the same roof. Ownership remained with successive noble families; the estate belonged to the von Diebitsch family up to 1945. Genealogical connections recorded for later owners include Jerzy Fryderyk Poths, who in 1790 received the Trójstrzał coat of arms and a noble title in recognition of services in financial administration.

After the Second World War the building survived, and in the 1970s it underwent renovation and adaptive works that removed part of the exterior decorative detail. In 2002 the palace became private property of Leokadia Brudzińska and was used as the seat of the Lubusz Academy of Art “Chichy Art” (Lubuska Akademia Sztuki “Chichy Art”). Stanisław Brudziński, Leokadia’s husband, died on 8 November 2019. In 2020 the estate passed to their son, Marcin Dobrowolski de Poths, and his wife Dominika, who have continued renovation while maintaining the site’s cultural functions. The house now accommodates a Studio of Exceptional Ceramics, the Lubusz Academy of Art ARTSY, guest rooms, and spaces for events such as folkloric concerts, performances of Slavic music, ceramic and ballet workshops, instruction in classical archery, and municipal patriotic gatherings like “Patriotic Singing.”