KOPASZEWO
This village is located in Commune [gmina] of Krzywiń, district [powiat] of Kościan, ca. 16 km south-west of Kościan.
In 1781, the local estate was taken over by Ludwik Skórzewski, the royal chamberlain, married first to Teodora nee Niegolewska and then, to Honorata nee Brzechwa. It was on his initiative that a new residence was built in Kopaszewo. Once Ludwik died, his son Antoni took over the property to administer it together with his mother. Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish Bard, was hosted at the palace for two weeks in August 1831 on their invitation.
Following Antoni’s premature death, his mother Honorata nee Brzechwa run the estate for some time – in fact, by 1844 when it was sold to General Dezydery Chłapowski of the coat-of-arms Drya, proprietor of Turwia and the nearby Rąbiń, a Napoleonic army officer and one of army commanders in the November Insurrection of 1830, married to Antonina nee Grudzińska (sister of Joanna, wife to Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich).
General Chłapowski’s residence was the palace at Turwia; Kopaszewo was initially administered by his son Stanisław and later on, his daughter Zofia. The estate was subsequently granted, in 1862, to Dezydery’s youngest son Kazimierz (after he married Anna Chłapowska of Czerwona-Wieś) who was to run it for almost fifty years, till he died in 1916. His son Mieczysław was to be the estate’s last proprietor; married to Wanda nee Potworowska, he was a commander of the Polonia Restituta order and of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. He was executed by a German firing squad at the Kościan market square in October 1939.
In the course of construction works carried out in by Mieczysław Chłapowski in 1921 to 1923, the palace’s functional arrangement was altered as the representative rooms were moved to the ground floor. Taking the opportunity, a sewerage and water-supply system was installed, as was electric wiring and a central heating system. Apart from levelling of secondary annexes, portico columns’ proportions were improved on the palace’s elevation and the inscription reading Każdy w swoim guście [‘Everyone to His or Her Taste’] was restored, first placed there by the Skórzewskis. The façade’s articulation has also been modified to an extent.
As preserved till this day, the palace is a brick edifice founded on a rectangular projection, with side annexes, its solid being two-storied, covered with a hip roof. A monumental portico on the front elevation axis, facing the south and supported against four Ionic columns, is surmounted with a triangular pediment with a semicircular window set in the central field. The rear, garden elevation features a shallow false projection whose façade is fragmented by pilasters with composite capitals, also crowned with a triangular pediment.
The two-track-arranged interior with a spacious vestibule and a salon on the axis as well as an assembly of side rooms has preserved remnants of the old décor, mostly dating to the late 19th/early 20th century.
A regular garden was arranged around the palace in the late 18th/early 19th century. Around mid-19th c., it was reshaped into an English-type landscape park complex, designed with a contribution of Augustine Denizot, a gardener-planner commissioned for the purpose from France.
Today, the palace houses a branch of ‘Danko’ Seminal & Farming Establishment.
