ZAMEK W JANOWCU NAD WISŁĄ. BUDOWA – ROZBUDOWA – RUINA KONSERWACJA – REWALORYZACJA – ZAGOSPODAROWANIE

The castle in Janowiec on the Vistula (county of Puławy, voivodeship of Lublin) was erected as a bastion fortress at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Up to the end of the sixteenth century it was the property of great Polish magnate families : the Firlejs, the Lubomirskis and the Tarłos, whose representatives held the highest state offices in prepartition Commonwealth. Expanded and redesigned in the course of three centuries, from the beginning of the nineteenth century the castle turned into a ruin. Its rapid devastation was the result of dismantling and weak construction material – limestone bedstone. In 1975 the castle was purchased by the Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny, which initiated the permanent securing of the object and opened its own on-the-spot branch entrusted with care for the historical monument. The revalorisation and preservation conducted for twenty five years were accompanied by thorough archaeological, historical and architectural research. Consequently, the museum, mindful of the technical state of the castle, recreated and protected part of the walls, predominantly for the purposes of displaying the original elements of defensive architecture and decorations from the first phase of the construction of the castle. In 1993 the range of the work was extended so as to include partial reconstruction intended to grant the castle assorted functions : museum, tourist, hotel and gastronomical. The general appearance of the castle will continue to be that of a permanent ruin. A complex of wooden manorial buildings transferred from assorted localities in the voivodeship of Lublin has been placed near the castle park. Together with the castle they constitute a functional entity. The author of the article maintains that the accepted range of the reconstruction of the castle, based upon the outcome of meticulous research, is acceptable and suits the criteria formulated in the Charter of Venice. Moreover, he regards a ruin to be a state highly undesirable for an architectural monument, and is in favour of reconstruction conducted to a degree permitted by the results of scientific investigations. J. Żurawski justifies his opinions by referring to universally applied practice which veers from official doctrine.