THE LUBLIN CASTLE
Situated where the Czechówka River flows into the Bystrzyca and surrounded by marshes, the Castle Hill was a difficult place to conquer.  This favourable natural location was the reason why, probably in the 6th c., an early-medieval defensive settlement was established on the very hill.
A Gothic castle built by Casimir the Great in the first half of the 14th c. was ruined during wartime in the second half of the 17th c. and consequently demolished in the 18th c. The only remnants of the old castle are the 13th-century Romanesque tower called a donjon, the Gothic Holy Trinity Royal Chapel and a fragment of the Gothic Jewish Tower.
The present neo-Gothic castle was built in the years 1824-26 and served as a prison used by Austrian and Russian Partition authorities, German occupants and also by the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland till 1954.
The castle is the seat of the Lublin Museum, which has countless valuable exhibits displayed in archaeological, numismatic, ethnographic and military departments. The gallery of paintings boasts the famous painting ‘The Union of Lublin’ by Jan Matejko as well as many other interesting art works by Polish and foreign artists.
DONJON
This Romanesque defence tower is the oldest structure on the Castle Hill. It was built in the first half of the 13th c. from brick and stone. The tower is 20 metres high with walls as thick as 4 metres near the ground. A characteristic feature of Romanesque style is a pairing of two arcade openings separated by a colonette which lets sunlight into the top floor of the donjon.
There is a viewing terrace on the top of the tower, which offers a spectacular panorama of the Old Town and the city.
HOLY TRINITY ROYAL CHAPEL
The Holy Trinity Chapel, situated on the Castle Hill, is one of the most important historic buildings in Lublin. It features beautiful Russo-Byzantine frescoes painted in the first half of the 15th c. at the request of King Ladislaus Jagiello. These paintings on the walls of a Roman-Catholic chapel depict religious images characteristic of the Orthodox Church, which is a unique example of the co-existence of East and West European cultures in Lublin. Among the portraits of saints and biblical scenes there are frescoes presenting Ladislaus Jagiello – and they are the only depictions of the king painted during his lifetime.