SpottingHistory.com is an independent site to provide reliable traveling tips to historic sites and sights all around the world. The site is made by individuals interested in history and historic places all around the world. The purpose is to provide an easy-use, map-based service to help people find interesting places to visit on their journeys.
The The main page displays you the top 200 most interesting (based on views and user rating) sites in the current map area. When you browse or zoom the map, sites will be updated dynamically.
When you zoom in, you will always see more and more complete list of all historic sites in map area.
On the right hand (below the map on mobile devices) you will see list of topmost interesting sites in the present map area. If you click any site link you will see the overview window. You can take a look at photos of selected attraction by clicking them. If you want to see more information about selected site, just click the Read More link at the bottom of info window. It will open a complete description of the selected site. Show on Map button correspondingly zooms and centers map to the selected site.
On the description page you will see all information of the selected attraction. You can also comment the site to help other people to decide where to visit or not.
Top Sights page shows the editor's picks of interesting historic sights for example in a city of region.
Tags page helps you to find all sites tagged with a specific tag, like Top Historic Sites in Helsinki.
Historical Periods gives you information of specific historical period in a selected country and lists the most interesting sites from that period.
City Guides comprise the all historic sites in a specific city.
SpottingHistory.com uses photo material loaded from Flickr or Wikimedia Commons. In every case we respect copyrights and all photos are always showed with adequate copyright information. If you want SpottingHistory.com not to use your photos in previously mentioned web services, please contact us using the form below and we will remove links. No photos or thumbnails are copied or stored into SpottingHistory.com servers, only imagelinks via service provider API's. If you upload new site, the photos you can select to be shown on the site page are automatically allowed for commercial use.
All map icons are downloaded from the Map Icons Collection. We thank Nicolas Mollet for this great service helping us to develop SpottingHistory.com.
If you have any questions, new ideas or you just wish to tell what rocks/sucks, please do not hesitate to contact us using the form below. We would be also very thankful if you notify us about any problems you encounter when using this site.
The Moszna Castle is one of the best known monuments in the western part of Upper Silesia. The history of this building begins in the 17th century, although much older cellars were found in the gardens during excavations carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the investigators, including H. Barthel, claimed that those cellars could have been remnants of a presumed Templar castle, but their theory has never been proved. After World War II, further excavations discovered a medieval palisade.
The central part of the castle is an old baroque palace which was partially destroyed by fire on the night of April 2, 1896 and was reconstructed in the same year in its original form by Franz Hubert von Tiele-Winckler. The reconstruction works involved an extension of the residence. The eastern Neogothic-styled wing of the building was built by 1900, along with an adjacent orangery. In 1912-1914, the western wing was built in the Neo-Renaissance style. The architectural form of the castle contains a wide variety of styles, thus it can be generally defined as eclectic.
The height of the building, as well as its numerous turrets and spires, give the impression of verticalism. The whole castle has exactly ninety-nine turrets. Inside, it contains 365 rooms. The castle was twice visited by the German Emperor Wilhelm II. His participation in hunting during his stay at the castle was documented in a hand-written chronicle in 1911 as well as in the following year. The castle in Moszna was the residence of a Silesian family Tiele-Winckler who were industrial magnates, from 1866 until the spring of 1945 when they were forced to move to Germany and the castle was occupied by the Red Army. The period of the Soviet control caused significant damage to the castle's internal fittings in comparison to the minor damage caused by WWII.
After World War II the castle did not have a permanent owner and was the home of various institutions until 1972 when it became a convalescent home. Later it became a Public Health Care Centre for Therapies of Neuroses. Nowadays it can be visited by tourists since the health institution has moved to another building in the neighbourhood. The castle also has a chapel which is used as a concert hall. Since 1998 the castle housed a gallery in which works of various artists are presented at regular exhibitions.
Apart from the castle itself, the entire complex includes a park which has no precise boundaries and includes nearby fields, meadows and a forest. Only the main axis of the park can be characterised as geometrical. Starting from the gate, it leads along the oak and then horse-chestnut avenues, towards the castle. Further on, the park passes into an avenue of lime trees with symmetrical canals running along both sides of the path, lined with a few varieties of rhododendrons. The axis of the park terminates at the base of a former monument of Hubert von Tiele-Winckler. On the eastern side of the avenue there is a pond with an islet referred to by the owners as Easter Island. The islet is planted with needle-leaved shrubs and can be reached by a Chinese-styled bridge. The garden, as part of the whole park complex was restored slightly earlier than the castle itself. Preserved documents of 1868 state that the improvement in the garden's aesthetic quality was undertaken by Hubert von Tiele-Winckler.