Palace in Teresin

The Palace in Teresin, Teresin, Poland, is a late 19th-century country house erected in a late Baroque spirit by members of the Epstein family. Built at the end of the 1800s, the present building replaced an earlier family residence on the same foundations and became a local seat of private estate life, later passing through several owners and public uses that tied it to regional religious, social, and administrative developments.

An earlier house occupied the same footprint before the current building. That earlier residence was raised by an earlier generation of the Epstein family on the site later used by the new construction. At the close of the 19th century Mieczysław Epstein, a Warsaw financier and banker, cleared the previous superstructure down to the foundations and built the new palace, retaining the underground vaulted cellars from the older house.

In 1909 the estate passed into the possession of the Drucki-Lubecki family. On 7 April 1913 the body of Prince Władysław Drucki-Lubecki, who had been murdered, was discovered in the grounds of the palace, an event that tied the property to a violent episode in its early 20th-century history. In 1927 the larger estate was subdivided, and a portion of the land was given to the Franciscan community from the nearby Niepokalanów friary, creating a formal link between the former private parkland and a religious institution.

During the Second World War officers of the German air force were stationed in the house, and the building survived the conflict without major structural damage. After 1945 the property was taken into state care and became the headquarters of the Central Association of Agricultural Cooperatives. Later it served as a training and rehabilitation centre for the agricultural social insurance institution KRUS. The palace underwent extensive refurbishment between 2014 and 2016, and the rehabilitation centre ended its activity in the building on 31 August 2017. By March 2020 the national farmers’ social insurance fund was examining possibilities for educational and social uses of the property, and the building was not open to visitors. The surrounding park, known for its mature oak trees, has been protected as a registered monument since 8 November 1978 (registration no. 612/50).