Brzeg Castle

The castle at Brzeg was rebuilt in the middle of the sixteenth century for Duke George II of Brzeg into the finest Renaissance building in Silesia, with an arcaded courtyard on the Italian model, and it is known as the Silesian Wawel for the resemblance. Its remarkable feature is the gatehouse: a three-storey stone frontispiece covered in sculpture, with busts of twenty-four rulers of the Piast dynasty set in medallions running up it, tracing the line from the legendary founder to the duke himself - a dynastic argument carved in stone, and a rare survival of that kind of programme anywhere. The Piasts of Brzeg-Legnica were the last branch of the dynasty and died out here in 1675. The castle was wrecked in the eighteenth century and again in 1945 and rebuilt from the 1960s; it now houses the Museum of the Silesian Piasts, with the ducal mausoleum in the adjoining church of St Hedwig.

What you actually see

• The carved gatehouse - twenty-four Piast rulers in medallions up three storeys.
• An arcaded courtyard - Italian Renaissance work of the 1550s.
• The Museum of the Silesian Piasts - inside the rebuilt wings.
• The ducal mausoleum - in St Hedwig's church alongside.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Most of the fabric is post-1960 reconstruction; the gatehouse sculpture is the main original survival. The museum is modest in scale. Closed Mondays, with short winter hours. The town itself has little else.

Nearby

Wroclaw is forty-five kilometres north-west; Opole is south-east.