Europe's night trains are a great institution. Go to sleep in your home city and wake up in an entirely different landscape. Warsaw Gdańska depart 22:06; arrive Wałbrzych Główny at 06:36; in good time to explore one of the most fascinating places in Poland - Książ castle (09:00 opening).
Below: waking up to this! Next stop, Wałbrzych Główny. Passing Kilometre 75.4 - some 10km beyond the legendary Kilometre 65, where the Nazi Gold Train turned out not to be. They scanned, they planned, they held press conferences, the world came - they cleared the ground and dug - nothing.
Below: approaching Wałbrzyska Fabryczna station, one of Wałbrzych's five stations, strung out along 13km of serpentine track that winds between the hills. Summer lightens the atmosphere somewhat; but abandoned factories and mines still haunt - the past abides.
Wałbrzych was an important railway hub with several lines branching off the main line, serving local communities, coal mines and factories. Some lines have been closed, others are being refurbished.
Książ castle is a phenomenal slice of European aristocratic history - from feudalism to the Third Reich - and it's also an integral part of the great unsolved historical mystery that continues to be Projekt Riese.
A castle that morphed, like many did, from a fortification against armed attack (a castle) to the projection of status hierarchy (a palace). Built in the 13th century on a hard-to-assault hilltop by Bolko I Surowy ('the Strict' or 'the Raw'), a Silesian duke. Książ castle - by then Schloss Fürstenstein - came into the hands of the Hochberg family after 1509. It flourished until the family tipped into bankruptcy, dragged down by the wild spending of Daisy, Princess of Pless (née Mary Cornwallis-West), the British-born wife of Prince Hans Heinrich XV von Hochberg. The castle was seized by the Nazis during WW2, where it was to become a part of the mysterious complex known as Riese ('giant'). The oldest part of the castle is the left; the newer palace building stuck onto it on the right.
To this day, no one knows for sure why the Third Reich invested so heavily - and so desperately - until the very end - in the project. Too large to be just a bunker for Hitler and his accomplices, out of range of Allied bombers; to late in the war to be a megafactory for wonder-weapons - there has never been any documentation discovered pertaining to what
Riese was for. A project that soaked up vast amounts of cement and steel at a time when it was desperately needed on the western and eastern fronts. [
Whistleblower David Grusch's mention of a UFO crash retrieval in Mussolini's Italy revives a rumour that
Riese may have been intended to be a Nazi Area 51.]
Below: an extensive tunnel network extends in all directions under the castle. In the distance, the old lift shaft that would have connected the castle. After the war, the local authorities wanted to seal it off, and used it as a dump for rubble from the heavily damaged town. No one today knows the full extent of the tunnels. The Polish Academy of Science has a chamber down here used for seismographic equipment, deep in the rock, sensitive enough to detect small earthquake on the other side of the planet. To conduct any serious exploration of the the tunnel network would mean having to switch off the seismometers and stop all experiments. Also, exploration would mean no conducted tours of the network - and tourists are money. But questions remain. Is there a tunnel from here to the main railway line? Was Książ meant to have been connected to
other parts of the Riese complex?
Below: roof detail. Blasted out of solid gneiss by slave labourers, the walls and ceiling were to be reinforced with concrete. In the foreground, rock. Deeper in - concrete. Note the mounting for electrical cables and ventilation pipes. Now here's part of the mystery. In February 1945, with the Red Army drawing near, the prisoners were evacuated from the site and force-marched westward. But in April, with Berlin surrounded and Lower Silesia within range of Soviet artillery, part of the construction team was herded back to Riese installations and made to install the concrete reinforcements. Why? The war was almost over, the work was not even one-eighth complete. What could have drove the Nazis to desperately continue tunnelling?
Left: one of the narrower corridors. There is a feeling of security down below - nothing is likely to cave in - the solid gneiss, the concrete reinforcements, the quality of the civil engineering. Much safer, I felt, than old coal mines now opened up to tourists.
The thing with Książ is that there's much to see above ground too. Below: the front elevation of Książ castle - the palace side. Above the entrance, two stories high, is the ballroom, magnificently decorated. In the room above, under the floor, is the winding mechanism for the ballroom candelabra, allowing them to be lowered and lit up before they ascend to operational altitude. The castle had a staff of three hundred, and in winter was kept warm by two wagon-loads of coal a day.
Below: the reverse angle, looking down from the third floor toward the gate house. Note the parched lawn - meadow would be better for the environment, if not keeping with the aesthetic of the period.
Książ castle is one of those places that strikes me as quintessential Europe; a long and rich history. Today a complex of hotels, restaurants and cafes ring the main building. I am reminded of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis's whimsical Portmeirion, but Książ has history. All that's missing is the sea.
The sides and rear of the castle are surrounded by ornamental terraced gardens. Above the terraces, a café serving craft ale on tap (just the thing of a hot lunchtime).
Left: portrait of Frederick the Great. Supervised the first partition of Poland, so not many fans of him around here today. His head is directed at the viewer, but his gaze is detached; those characteristic large eyes looking down. His right hand appears to be pointing at the viewer, but is actually grasping the chair. Unsettling. Painted by Oskar Begas, around 80 years after Frederick the Great's death. Painting on loan from Germany, which I think is telling about cultural and historical ties within the EU. A shared history, not altogether comfortable, but one that we're now open to.
Below: exceptionally beautiful location gives rise to magnificent views from all four sides of the castle.
Below: the Palm House, quite a way from the castle, but on the same ticket, so worth dropping in. Part of Princess Daisy's expensive investments.
Wałbrzych has really come on as a town since I first visited 16 years ago. It has reinvented itself as a centre for advanced manufacturing... and history.
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