Ostromecko

Ostromecko is a village located in the Chełmno Upland and partly in the Vistula valley, surrounded by, inter alia, the picturesque nature reserves  Wielka Kępa Ostromecka, Las Mariański, Reptowo, and Mała Kępa Ostromecka.

The village was first mentioned in documents in 1222. However, the archaeological research carried out in the area revealed remnants of a cemetery from the Hallstatt Period (approximately around 700-400 B.C.), which confirms that the first human settlements had existed here earlier.

The Palace and Park Complex is certainly the most-treasured building in the village.  The title of monument was also granted to the Old Palace (Mostowski Palace) built around 1730 in the Saxon Rococo style, together with the park and the observation deck adjacent to it. The Complex also contains the charming late-Classical New Palace built in 1849, according to a design drawn up at the design studio of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a complex of patios, and the mausoleum of the Schönborn-Alvensleben Family, with the Hunters’ Lodge added in the 19th Century.

You will find here a historic Palace park, designed by Peter Joseph Lenné, a Prussian gardener and landscape architect, according to the principles of the English landscape garden, covering the area of 35ha, and affording unique qualities of nature. They result from the presence of as many as 4,500 trees, 64 of which have been granted the title of nature monuments.  When in Ostromecko pay particular attention to the Italian park from the 18th Century, with patios in the vicinity of the Old Palace, and the landscape park from the 19th Century, in the English style, which surrounds the New Palace from the West. On a hill, next to the Palace complex, there is the St. Nicholas, St. Stanislaus, and St. John the Baptist Church,  built in the 14th Century, and converted in the years 1763-1764, with a Baroque tower.

The extraordinarily beautiful interiors of the Old Palace were used in Trędowata/Leper, directed by Edward Puchalski and Józef Węgrzyn, a film adaptation of a novel by Helena Mniszkówna, in 1926. It was the first-ever adaptation of the novel, featuring Jadwiga Smosarska, at the time a star of the silver screen.

Today, the Baroque Palace is home to a collection of pianos. It was founded in 1978, on the initiative of Andrzej Szwalbe, the then director of the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Pomeranian Philharmonic in Bydgoszcz.

The concept behind it was to present the history of piano development in the 19th Century, its external appearance, mechanism, sound system, and tones.  It was part of the collection on display at the Pomeranian Philharmonic for many years. After the turbulent political and economic changes taking place at the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st Century, the collection was taken over by the Municipal Cultural Centre in Bydgoszcz and situated in the Palace complex in Ostromecko, near Bydgoszcz, according to the original vision of Director Andrzej Szwalbe.

Now the collection has fine specimens of a square-tangent piano, a grand piano, upright pianos, and mixed instruments.

The Ostromecko of today is a place of many cultural events and meetings.