Nieborow and Arkadia

Nieborow was built in the 1690s by Tylman van Gameren for a primate of Poland and passed to the Radziwill family, who kept it for two centuries and filled it - and the crucial fact about the place is that unlike almost every other Polish country house it came through the twentieth century with its contents largely in place: furniture, portraits, the library of some ten thousand volumes, Dutch tiles up the staircase, an antique Niobe head the family treated as the house's talisman. It is now a branch of the National Museum. Two kilometres away is Arkadia, laid out from 1778 by Helena Radziwill as a sentimental landscape garden: an artificial lake with a Temple of Diana, a deliberately ruined aqueduct and archway, a Gothic house, a High Priest's Sanctuary, all built as ruins from the start and salted with genuine medieval fragments she collected. The two together are the best surviving example in Poland of how the eighteenth century wanted to live.

What you actually see

• Interiors still furnished - portraits, Dutch tiles and a library of ten thousand volumes.
• The Niobe head - an antique the Radziwills treated as the house's talisman.
• Arkadia's built ruins - a Temple of Diana, broken aqueduct and Gothic house, ruined by design.
• Collected fragments - real medieval stonework set into the fake ruins.

When to go

May to September, for the garden. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Palace rooms are seen on a guided route with timed entry and can sell out. Arkadia is a separate ticket and a two-kilometre trip. The garden buildings are mostly viewed from outside. Winter opening is much reduced.

Nearby

Lowicz and its folk-costume tradition are ten kilometres north.