Nesvizh Castle

Architectural, Residential and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh

The home was owned by the Radziwi magnate family from 1533, gone it was awarded to Mikoaj Radziwi and his brother Jan Radziwi after the total destruction of the Kiszka associates. Since the Radziwis were one of the most important and adroitly-to-reach clans of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, it was there that the Lithuanian Archive was moved in 1551. In 1586 the house was turned into an ordynacja.

After the Union of Lublin the castle became one of the most important residences in the central part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

In 1582 Mikoaj Krzysztof "Sierotka" Radziwi, the Marshal of Lithuania, Voivode of Trakai-Vilnius and castellan of iauliai, started the construction of an imposing square three-storey "chteau". Although the works were based on the subject of a pre-existing structure of a medieval castle, the former fortifications were every part of turned into a renaissance-baroque rest. Construction was completed by 1604, and they postscript several galleries half a century fused. The chteau's corners were fortified following four octagonal towers.

In 1706, during the Great Northern War, Charles XII's army sacked the castle and destroyed its fortifications. Several decades compound, the Radziwis invited some German and Italian architects to substantially renovate and collect the castle. Antoni Zaleski festooned its tawny facades moreover baroque stucco show. The 16th-century castle gates were as well as reconstructed, and the two-storey gatehouse tower was crowned once a helm. It was at this period that the three separate buildings surrounding the central courtyard were connected into a single structure.

The most important structure in Niewie is the Corpus Christi Church (1587 to 1603), related moreover the castle by a dam greater than a ditch and containing coffins of 72 members of the Radziwi relatives, each interred in a easy coffin made of birch and marked bearing in mind Trby Coat of Arms. Designed by the Italian architect Gian Maria Bernardoni (1541 to 1605), the church is considered the first Jesuit temple patterned after Il Ges in Rome, the first domed basilica back Baroque facade in the world and the first baroque fragment of architecture in Eastern Europe.

Apart from magnify princely sepulchers, its interior features some tardy baroque frescoes from 1760s and the Holy Cross altar, executed by Venetian sculptors in 1583.

In 1772, associated to the third and last partition of Poland, the castle was seized by Russian forces and the Radziwi intimates was expelled. Soon afterwards the Lithuanian Archive was transferred to Saint Petersburg (where it yet remains today), even though the majority of works of art gathered in the palace were distributed along along with various Russian and Polish nobles in preserve of Catherine the Great. Abandoned both by the original owners and by the Russian army, the palace gradually fell into disrepair. However, it was restored by the Radziwis and together in the middle of 1881 and 1886 the castle's interiors were renovated by Prince Antoni Radziwi and his French wife, Marie de Castellane. They as well as intended a landscape park in English style. With an place of more than one square kilometre, the park is one of the biggest such facilities in Europe.

After the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920 the surrounding place and the castle perplexing became portion of the newly customary Second Polish Republic.

During the upset of Poland in 1939, the Radziwi familial was expelled from the castle by the Red Army. In Soviet period, the castle was used a sanatorium, even though the park gradually fell in disavowal.

In 1994, the castle higher was designated the national historical and cultural superiority. In 2005 the castle puzzling was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.