Today, the village of Bily Kamin in Lviv region attracts tourists with its Renaissance church, but few people know that a fortified castle once stood here, built by the Vyshnevetsky family. This fortress once impressed with its scale, architectural sophistication, and the status of its owners.
The construction of the castle was started in 1611 by Prince Yuri Vyshnevetsky, a representative of an ancient Ruthenian family, who converted to Catholicism for the sake of a career in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The estate later passed to his nephew Yarema Vyshnevetsky, one of the wealthiest magnates of the time. It was under his participation that the castle reached its greatest prosperity.
There is a legend that it was in this castle that Yarema's son, Mykhailo Vyshnevetsky, who later became the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was born on July 31, 1640. The estate, which was not ashamed to host Polish kings, had a strategic location near the Western Bug, and the castle was surrounded by an artificial lake, a park, moats with water, and powerful ramparts.
Architecturally, the castle was built in the Renaissance style - a rectangular shape with octagonal towers at each corner, a portal made of white stone, arcades in the courtyard, carvings on the windows and doors. The living quarters were located in the attached palace and in the thickness of the wall of the lower tier.
After the Vyshnevetskys, the castle passed to the Radziwill family, but the lack of heirs led to its sale. The new owners had neither the funds nor the interest in maintaining the fortress. The castle began to decline in the 18th century. With the arrival of the Austrian authorities, part of the walls were dismantled, and the stone was used to build a sugar factory and a brewery.
The final blow was dealt by the Soviet authorities, who destroyed the remains of the building to organize a collective farm stadium in its place. Not a single tower or wall has survived to this day, only photographs of the ruins taken by local historian Mieczysław Orłowicz in 1919.
Architectural experts suggest that the castle in Biały Kamien could have been similar in style to the preserved castle in Baranów Sandomierz, as they were built at the same time and belonged to relatives.
