Manor House in Wolin

The manor house in Wolin stands in the courtyard of the town hall on Zamkowa Street, on the site of the medieval castle of the Dukes of Pomerania. It was built at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries by the von Below family. Since a renovation completed in 2012 it has housed the Cultural Centre for International Cooperation.

From castle to manor house

In the 12th century a wooden manor of a Slavic castellan stood here. At the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries a castle of the Dukes of Pomerania was built on the same site, called the dowager castle because dowager duchesses lived in it, among them Anna Maria of Brandenburg, Anna of Brunswick and Sophia of Saxony. The castle was rebuilt in 1622, and in 1628 it burned down together with the neighbouring Cistercian nunnery during a fire that swept the town. In the second half of the 17th century the remains were demolished, and only the cellars were left.

The manor house and its fortunes

The brick manor house, described in the Wikipedia entry as Baroque, was built as a townsman's manor or a Junker's residence. Its walls do not coincide exactly with the foundations of the castle, which can be seen outside, because the original outline of the castle and the castle chapel has been marked on the ground in Gothic brick. During the Second World War it housed the German police, and after the war for many years it was the joiner's workshop of a municipal services company. Revitalisation began in April 2009 and was carried out in three stages, together with archaeological research, and the building was brought into use on 20 December 2012.

Nearby

Right next door is the Andrzej Kaube Regional Museum, and not far away stands the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas.

Practical information

• Address: Zamkowa 23a, Wolin, the town hall courtyard.
• The hours at which you can go inside, and the Centre's programme, are given by its manager. The sources we used do not give them.