The Radziwiłł hunting palace in Antonin takes board meetings, discreet negotiations, training days, anniversaries and company banquets for up to 60 guests, and can lodge a small group in its 13 rooms and apartments. The palace stands among forests at Antonin, in the Przygodzice district of Greater Poland, between Ostrzeszów and Ostrów Wielkopolski.
Seminars and company events
The palace presents itself as a place for business meetings held away from the office: negotiations with partners, management board sessions, training courses, company jubilees, receptions and banquets. The Fireplace Hall seats up to 60 for a presentation or a dinner, and the Jerzy Waldorff Room, a small banquet room, suits a board of ten. Projectors and Wi-Fi are provided. Events are priced to each brief and program, and a group can combine working sessions, meals in the restaurant and an evening by the fire outdoors.
Weddings and receptions
Besides company events, the palace hosts family celebrations, occasional banquets and receptions. An outdoor area is set up for a grill or a bonfire in the park. Rental costs are calculated for each event.
Rooms and capacities
The Fireplace Hall (Sala Kominkowa) takes up to 60 guests. The Jerzy Waldorff Room is a small banquet room for up to 10. Outdoors, a grill and bonfire area extends the program into the park.
Accommodation
The palace offers 13 period rooms and apartments, enough to keep a board or a small team on site for a two-day meeting.
Catering
The palace runs its own restaurant and café, which serve meals and banquets on site. Outdoor grill evenings can be arranged in the park.
History and setting
Prince Antoni Henryk Radziwiłł, governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen, commissioned the palace as his summer hunting residence, and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the leading Berlin architect of the period, designed it. Completed in 1824, it is built on an octagonal plan, with a four-story central hall and four lower wings. The frame is timber set on a foundation of bog iron ore, and the brick walls are faced with larch beams, so the whole house reads as a wooden building. Inside, a great Doric column doubles as a fireplace with two hearths, and galleries on the first and second floors run around the main hall under a radiating beamed ceiling. Hunting trophies still hang on the walls.
Frédéric Chopin stayed here between 1826 and 1829, gave lessons to Princess Wanda Radziwiłł and wrote his Introduction and Polonaise in C major, Op. 3. After the war the palace declined; a first restoration in 1975 to 1978 owed much to the critic Jerzy Waldorff, and its revitalization received a Europa Nostra award in 2003. Today it is run by the Centre for Culture and Art in Kalisz and hosts the annual festival Chopin in Autumn Colors, with a music salon of period instruments.
Getting there
Antonin lies at a fork of roads toward Wrocław and Silesia, in the forested Barycz Valley area, between Ostrzeszów and Ostrów Wielkopolski.
