A Neoclassical Dietrichstein palace from the 1740s next to the market square in Wodzisław Śląski, since 1971 the seat of the town museum.
The Dietrichstein Palace, also called the castle, stands right by the market square in Wodzisław Śląski and since 1971 has housed the Wodzisław Śląski Museum. It was built in the first half of the 1740s on the site of a medieval castle. It is a brick, two-storey building in the Neoclassical style and was entered in the heritage register in 1966.
The first Wodzisław castle was probably built around 1257, at the foundation of Duke Władysław of Opole-Racibórz, in the early days of the town. The oldest part of the complex is considered to be the mound in the City Park, about 40 metres south of the palace, on which a wooden residential and defensive tower presumably stood. In the 16th century the castle consisted of a gate, an armoury and a main building, and the whole was surrounded by a moat with a bridge. In 1648 it was destroyed by the Swedes. Rebuilt, it never regained its former splendour. At the end of the 17th century the Wodzisław estates passed to the Dietrichstein family.
The new residence was commissioned by Guidobald Josef von Dietrichstein, who in 1743 married Maria Gabriela Henckel von Donnersmarck. Construction began around 1743 and was completed before 1747. A double cartouche with the coats of arms of both families can still be seen on the front elevation. The design was probably by the Moravian architect Franz Anton Grimm. The old castle was pulled down and gardens were laid out in its place. Some of the stones from the old building may have been reused in building the palace.
The building has the plan of an elongated rectangle measuring about 52.8 by 17.3 metres. Its façade is symmetrical, with fifteen bays and a shallow three-bay avant-corps topped with a triangular gable. The garden elevation has eleven bays and an avant-corps with fluted pilaster strips. The lower parts of the walls were built of stone and brick, the upper ones are brick. The palace is considered one of the first Neoclassical buildings in the Polish lands.
After the Dietrichsteins, who owned the palace until 1772, the building often changed owners. The great fire of the town in 1822 destroyed the roof and the upper floor. From 1881 the town council was housed here entirely, until 1974, and in the interwar period and during the Second World War also the police headquarters. In 2018-2022 a thorough reconstruction was carried out, in which a mansard roof with dormers and bull's-eye windows was recreated.
The museum grew out of a regional room run by the Society of Friends of the Wodzisław Land. The ground floor is occupied by exhibitions on the past of the Wodzisław land. The displays include the prehistory of the Rybnik-Wodzisław land, everyday life in the medieval town and the history of the 20th century in Wodzisław; the museum also announces a new permanent exhibition devoted to the interwar period and the Second World War, so the set changes. On the first floor there is a gallery of temporary exhibitions of contemporary art, with particular attention to local artists, and on the second the Zone of Discovery, Imagination and Activity (SOWA), a local science centre created under the patronage of the Copernicus Science Centre. The building has been adapted for people with disabilities: it has thresholdless doors, a lift and adapted toilets.
The palace stands right by the Market Square in Wodzisław Śląski. About 3.6 km away is the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and traces of the industrial past of the region are shown by the Ignacy Historic Mine.
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