Opinogora Museum of Romanticism

Opinogora was the estate of the Krasinski family and the small neo-Gothic castle in its park was built in the 1840s, said to have been a wedding gift for Zygmunt Krasinski, one of the three poets Poles call the national bards along with Mickiewicz and Slowacki. The building is more pavilion than castle - a compact turreted block in a landscape park - and since 1961 it has held the Museum of Romanticism, the only institution in Poland dedicated to the period as a whole rather than to one figure. The collection covers Polish and European Romantic painting, furniture, manuscripts, portraits and material connected with the emigration after 1831, when much of Polish literary life moved to Paris. The park runs to about twenty-two hectares with a nineteenth-century layout, an orangery and a family chapel in the village church. Concerts and readings are held in the grounds in summer.

What to look for

• A neo-Gothic pavilion castle - built in the 1840s in a landscape park.
• The only museum of Romanticism - covering the movement rather than one writer.
• Krasinski material - manuscripts, portraits and the emigration collections.
• A twenty-two-hectare park - with an orangery and family chapel nearby.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

What to expect

The castle is small and the visit short unless the temporary exhibition interests you. Labelling is largely in Polish and assumes knowledge of the literature. Closed Mondays. Public transport is thin.

Nearby

Ciechanow castle is eight kilometres away; Pultusk is south-east.

Key facts