Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
Continuing the interesting stories and fates of the buildings of our city, I would like to once again focus on the impressive architecture of the unfortunately disappeared Lubomirski palace complex.
Historians and local historians believe that its life began in 1461, when the Lutsk nobleman Ivashko Dychka sold his Rivne house to Prince Semen Nesvytsky. And his wife Maria and daughter Anastasia decided to establish their permanent estate in Rivne. Until 1723, Rivne was passed into the ownership of the descendants of the Ostrozkys, and, finally, under mysterious legal circumstances, it passed into the ownership of Prince Jerzy Oleksandr Lubomirsky. It was Jerzy Lubomirsky who is known as a political intriguer, gained fame as one of the richest princes in Poland and reached the highest property level in the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His fortune included 31 cities, 738 villages, which brought a total income of 2,919,641 zlotys! His son Józef Lubomirsky at the end of the 18th century. began to improve the castle territory. Artificial relief, rooms for the prince's entertainment, symbolic mini-structures, graceful bridges, and lovely gazebos began to appear thanks to architects hired from the West.
One of them, Jan Jakub Bourguignon, was of French origin (architecture professor Petro Rychkov suggested that he was buried somewhere in Grabnik, but his burial place disappeared with the passage of time). He designed a two-story palace building in the Baroque style. According to the description, it had four balconies on different sides and four doors. On the first floor there were 22 rooms and a small hall, on the second – 8 and a large banquet hall. The walls were decorated with stucco and fabric. To imagine the grandeur of the palace, according to historians, the prince, returning from hunting, would ride into the palace on horseback to the second floor, throwing his prey at his wife's feet. By the way, honored guests, arriving at balls, would also ride straight into the palace.
Next to the palace there is a two-story wing (servants lived in it), a smokehouse, a poultry house and a stable. The palace itself had three cellars. In addition, Bourguignon also designed the park area and entrances to the palace. He also built a greenhouse for the Lubomirskis.
Another architect, Tuscher (Tauscher), later slightly changed the appearance of the palace in the Rococo style, which only added to the beauty of the castle.
During the last reconstruction of the palace in 1815, the Italian painters Villani and Carmaroni decorated the interior of the palace with frescoes, and the Polish artist from Warsaw, Mr. Lukaszewicz, created a portrait gallery of the Lubomirski family. By the end of the 1890s, two wooden wings of the palace were completed.
The Princes Lubomirski entertained and surprised their no less famous guests, showing them around the palace magnificent sculptures, gazebos, imitations of the ruins of ancient buildings, carousels, playgrounds for entertainment, and had their own orchestra, which numbered about 100 musicians. Drawbridges led to the palace through ponds and canals. The estate was called the Venice of Rivne. The court also had: a manege, a theater, a Chinese pagoda, demonstrated the eruption of the artificial volcano Vesuvius or invited to the pheasant farm, where pheasants were raised. Pineapples were grown in a specially equipped greenhouse, and rare tropical plants and flowers in the newly built greenhouse. By the way, the premises of the greenhouse, in a somewhat distorted form, have survived to this day. This is a two-story house No. 17 on Dragomanova Street next to the local history museum.
The Lubomirski princes owned the city, which received the unofficial status of one of the largest residences in Poland at that time, for more than two hundred years.
Alla PETRYKOVSKA,
teacher of construction disciplines
