Kliczków Castle, which today serves as a hotel and conference venue, winks at the era of the Polish People’s Republic by organising a popular carnival ball for Shrove Tuesday, “In the Vapours of Absurdity, or the Charm of the Polish People’s Republic.” We warmly invite you to the ball on Saturday, 7 February.
Few people know that the walls of Kliczków Castle are covered with various slogans associated with the era of real socialism in Poland. In the 1940s, during the height of Stalinism, the first such slogans appeared in the castle complex on the Kwisa River. At that time, units of young workers were stationed in Kliczków and worked in the surrounding forest. The slogans were intended to motivate them to work even more efficiently, in the socialist spirit, of course.
Two decades later, the inscriptions, worn away by the passage of time, were repainted by the Polish People’s Army.
Thanks to the care of Kliczków Castle’s current custodians and their extensive conservation efforts, the slogans remain visible to this day and can still have a powerful effect on those who read them. Today, this effect is quite different from what the authors of the paintings would have expected: they bring smiles and cheerful excitement, and sometimes amused detachment or bemused pity among guests reading them at Kliczków Castle.
Either way, Kliczków is worth visiting for these relics of history as well—a history that, for better or worse, also forms part of the identity of the castle, which is beautiful today.
