Zamek w Mielniku

The castle occupies a two-part plan divided by a gate tower, with an upper ward on the higher western slope and a lower ward on the gentler eastern side. The defensive arrangement reflects successive building phases from the medieval gród to a Renaissance residence, and surviving fabric shows both earth-and-timber works and later masonry construction.

The lower enclosure preserves traces of a compact defensive bank built on a stone foundation, formed from earth and timber to about three metres in thickness, with a northern tower once set into this work. The eastern line of this former bank aligns with the eastern side of the Church of the Holy Trinity, indicating how the rampart defined the lower ward. On the lower terrace a masonry gate tower once controlled access, and in the south-west sector archaeologists recorded a two-chamber oven associated with daily domestic functions. During expansion of the lower plateau the ground was raised northwards and eastwards to level older defenses and to accommodate a new house on the enlarged area; a three-room manor stood here in the mid-16th century.

The upper ward was dominated by a stone townhouse-like main block with two towers. The great tower appears to have risen three storeys and carried a small lookout turret; its second floor connected with two projecting towers and a gallery opened onto the courtyard. Within the courtyard lay a cell historically called the izba czarna, translated as the “black chamber,” which served as a prison. In the 16th-century modernization a tiled stove with two small turrets was installed in the great tower, a coffered ceiling was set in parts of the residence, and Venetian-style windows bearing royal coats of arms were inserted to emphasize representational interiors. By 1551 some of the older defensive towers and a wooden passage tower between the lower and upper wards were dismantled and replaced by a new masonry residential building.

After the mid-1500s fire only the church and the entrance tower remained as substantial standing elements, and after the 1657 conflagration the castle itself remained a ruin while the church survived in altered form. The 19th-century emplacement of many metres of earth on the upper hill to create a small chapel changed the original topography and covered portions of the upper ward. Twentieth-century wartime and wartime-period fires destroyed much of the church fabric, leaving the site today represented by fragmentary masonry and ruined church remains.