Visit to Pidhirtsi castle is the opportunity to spend a weekend

Western Ukraine cherishes many interesting monuments of history. One of them is an old castle in the village Pidhirtsi — the magnificent residence of the crown Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Palace is interesting from an architectural point of view, and as the place where he carried out alchemical experiments and reported abnormal phenomenon. 

The history of the castle began in 1440 after receipt of Ivan Podgoretsky privileges from the Polish king Wladyslaw Jagiello III (1424 – 1444) on the ground near Plesnikova settlement, which soon were strengthened by locking one of the spurs of the Podolian upland

Visited here in 1711 Russian Tsar Peter I brought to St. Petersburg several sculptures by Italian masters and soon launched the construction of Peterhof.

The initial design of the castle embodied in the life of del Aqua and Boplan on a hill above a flat area of Small Polissya project “Palazzo in the fortress” in the Renaissance style of stone and brick, included a two-storey Palace with a three-storey Central part and side pavilions in the centre of the quadrangle, surrounded by defensive walls and a moat on three sides, and from the North – Italian Park. The West wing was intended for social activities, Eastern private quarters of the owners. The external space of the courtyard was decorated with fountains and sculptures, greenhouses and the menagerie, and for supplying the castle with water was arranged 38 – meter well.
During the reconstruction in 1728, the Palace acquire its present form: a completed third floor, dome side pavilions are decorated with copper sculptures of Atlantes, one of which holds the Earth and the other Universe on his shoulders, removed the moat and drawbridge, and other fortifications were decorated with stuccoes and commemorative plates.

Pidhirtsi castle is a fortified fortress and a Palace. At the time of its dawn, which was in the 18th century, he was considered one of the most beautiful in Eastern Europe. Today the only inhabitants of the once brilliant residence is the White Lady — a Ghost of a sad young girl who was murdered in the Palace dungeon some centuries ago.

How to get there: by car on the highway E 40 (M 06) (Lviv — Dubno — Rivne — Zhytomyr — Kyiv — Lubny — Poltava — Kharkiv — Izyum — Slavyansk — Lugansk) before turning to Zagorci, then to Pidhirtsi.