Baranow Sandomierski Castle

Baranow was built between 1591 and 1606 for the Leszczynski family and is attributed to Santi Gucci, the Florentine who worked at Wawel, which is why the comparison is made: a rectangular block with corner towers around an arcaded courtyard, and in that courtyard a broad double-flight staircase rising to the loggia, an unusual and theatrical arrangement that is the building's signature. The detailing - mascarons, dolphins, carved parapet - is the same Italian-Polish Renaissance idiom as the royal castle, at a domestic scale, and the survival is good: it escaped the worst of the wars and was restored in the 1960s and 1970s partly with sulphur-industry money from Tarnobrzeg. Some interiors are shown with period furnishing and there is a museum of sulphur mining, which is a genuinely local subject - the deposits nearby were among the largest in the world and were worked from the 1950s.

What you actually see

• A double-flight courtyard stair - the theatrical arrangement that defines the castle.
• Santi Gucci's idiom - mascarons, dolphins and carved parapet, as at Wawel.
• Period interiors - furnished rooms in part of the building.
• A sulphur mining museum - the industry that funded the restoration.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Part of the castle operates as a hotel and restaurant and closes for events. Interiors are seen on a guided route. Closed Mondays in low season. The town has little else.

Nearby

Sandomierz is twenty-five kilometres north; Tarnobrzeg is close.