Hotel Kościuszko**** 2008 history

Dwór Kościuszko - The Kościuszko Manor

This historic, two-storey manor house, which covers 500 sq m, lies within the grounds of Dworek Białoprądnicki [the manor of Prądnik Biały], a former summer residence of the bishops of Kraków. Due to intense urban development, the site has been incorporated into the greater city and it now lies at the intersection of Opolska and Białoprądnicka Streets. The Kościuszko Manor is located in a historic park.

History of the Prądnik Biały village

The old village of Prądnik Biały was founded on the route to the Wielkopolska Region [Central Poland] . The oldest accounts of its existence, which date from the year 1123, mention the name of Prutnic – a village that belonged to the Bishops of Kraków. In 1220, the Bishop Iwo Odrowąż founded the first hospital in the Kraków region there. It was run by the convent of the Canons of the Holy Spirit De Saxia. The monks moved to Kraków in 1244. However, they maintained considerable property in the vicinity, including three mills.

In the 1470s the village was called Magna Prandnik (later it became known as Prądnik Wielki). The bread and flour from here was famed for its quality, and it continues to be made until today. Documents exist from the year 1421 revealing that a considerable quantity of bread made in the district was legally apportioned to the bishops of Kraków. In the grounds of the bishops’ manorial farm, Samuel Maciejowski built a Renaissance palace with a garden which became the summer residence of the bishops of Kraków. Amongst the prominent guests here were the famed poets Jan Kochanowski and Szymon Szymonowic, also Łukasz Górnicki, author of the tract ‘The Polish Courtier’ (1566), based on the Italian work of Baldassare Castiglione. The fictional dialogues within the book were set in this very palace.

In 1574, the Polish nobility welcomed there elected King Henri Valois on the Pradnik Common. And in 1697, King August II began his coronation progress into Kraków from Prądnik Biały. The fields between Prądnik Bialy and Czerwony became a theatre of battle in 1587, when the famed Chancellor and Commander in Chief Jan Zamoyski defeated Archduke Maximilian Habsburg, who then retreated to Silesia.

In 1789, The Great Four Year Sejm (Parliament), regulating the revenues of bishoprics, incorporated the estate at Prądnik into the Military Treasury of Poland. Jacek Kluszewski was a tenant, a man who later became an outstanding figure in the theatrical world, founding the Stary Theatre in Kraków. In 1794, during the first national uprising against the partitions of Poland by Russia, Tadeusz Kościuszko, the commander of this uprising, stayed in Prądnik. Tradition has it that he rested under the sycamore tree (that still stands in the manorial park) before the famed victorious battle at nearby Racławice. In the year 1809, Napoleon’s general Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, the commander of the Polish Legion in Italy, also stayed in the manor at Prądnik.

In the beginning of the 19th c., the manor that still exists today was constructed on the foundations of the old bishops’ palace - along with its outbuildings, an inn and servants quarters. A hundred years later, the village had 650 souls, 45 houses, one-grade school, 3 mills, a brick foundry and a tannery. During the incorporation of neighbouring communes into the Greater Krakow in the year 1910, parts of Prądnik Czerwony and Biały joined the city. Thus, in the years 1913-15 the Municipal Sanitary Works were founded at Prądnicka Street; and in 1930 the nunnery of the Sacred Soul of Our Lord was founded in the then suburban Prądnik. During the postwar development of Kraków, the large prefabricated housing estates of Prądnik Biały Zachód and Prądnik Biały Wschód were constructed. The manorial park and the Prądnik Manor itself were however spared and they have now been restored.

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