The Amber Palace

The Amber Palace is one of two eclectic palaces built in Strzekęcin. It was likely constructed on the site of an earlier building between 1899 and 1901 as the ancestral seat of the von Kamecke family.  The palace is surrounded by an ornate park garden (a landscape park) overlooking a lake—its original version was laid out around the 18th century, and the current layout is a reconstruction from the 1990s. 

The palace is built in a combination of Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic, and Art Nouveau styles. Its structure is reminiscent of defensive fortifications . A turret is located on the northeast side. The facade is clad in yellowish sandstone, which is likely the origin of the palace’s name. After the war, the building came under Soviet control; in the 1960s, it became the headquarters of a state-owned farm (PGR); from 1966 to 1980, it served as a vacation center for employees of the Jelcz Automotive Works; and after that period, it served as a dormitory forstudents of the Koszalin technical school of construction, before finally coming into the possession of the Citizens’ Militia. In the 1990s, the heavily dilapidated palace passed into private hands, and after many years of effort by the new owner, it was converted into a four-star hotel with a spa.

Also noteworthy is the previously mentioned 10-hectare French garden. Here you’ll find, among othertrees, yews, cypresses, thujas, Douglas firs, Serbian spruces, beeches, hornbeams, and black locusts. A plane tree-lined avenue leads up to the palace.