The settlement appears in written sources in the eleventh century as a possession of princes of the Rurik dynasty. In the late fourteenth century, Władysław Jagiełło granted Dubno to Teodor Ostrogski, son of Daniel, the progenitor of the family. The town flourished under Konstanty Ostrogski, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, the victorious commander at Orsha and an outstanding military leader who repeatedly defeated Tatar and Muscovite forces. In 1507, Sigismund I the Old granted Dubno a charter under Magdeburg law, together with privileges to hold fairs and collect tolls from passing merchants. In the sixteenth century, the fortified town and castle formed a strong defensive position that withstood Tatar attacks.

The town remained in the hands of the Ostrogski family until the death of its last male representative, Janusz, Castellan of Kraków and one of the wealthiest magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1609, he established an entail on his estates, then the largest in the country, comprising 24 towns and almost 600 villages. Notably, its first holder imposed obligations relating to the defence of the Commonwealth as a whole. The prince also stipulated that, should all potential male heirs die out, the entailed estates were to become a commandery of the Knights of Malta, headed by a Pole. Its task would be to defend the Commonwealth’s eastern borders. After Prince Janusz’s death, however, the town and the entailed estates passed to his son-in-law, Aleksander Zasławski. They subsequently belonged to the Lubomirski and Sanguszko families.

The Fifteenth Century

A castle existed in Dubno as early as the fifteenth century. Its construction is attributed to Wasyl Ostrogski, known as the Handsome. Between 1489 and 1506, the fortified residence was remodelled by Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski. Situated on a promontory surrounded by the waters and backwaters of the Ikva River, the castle already possessed considerable defensive strength in the sixteenth century. In 1577, Janusz Ostrogski repelled a Tatar attack there. The surviving two-storey building on the axis of the western curtain wall is probably a remnant of that earlier complex. In 1582, the ill-fated Halszka of Ostróg died at the castle. The daughter of Prince Eliasz Ostrogski and Beata Kościelecka, she was heiress to an immense fortune, and members of the Commonwealth’s most powerful magnate families had fought bloodily for her hand in marriage. The last of the Ostrogskis, Janusz, began transforming the earlier structure into a bastioned castle built according to the principles of the New Italian school of fortification. Alternatively, this work may only have begun under his son-in-law, Aleksander Zasławski, whose coat of arms appears in a cartouche above the entrance gate.

Built of sandstone in its lower sections and brick above, the fortress had a roughly trapezoidal plan. The Ikva and its backwaters protected it on three sides, while a deep, water-filled moat cut it off from the west. The outer side of the moat was reinforced with a stone counterscarp. A bridge with a drawbridge section crossed the moat, leading to a barrel-vaulted gateway with a rusticated portal crowned by a triangular pediment, and then to the building mentioned above, which also contained a vaulted entrance passage. Two prominent bastions with orillons and cylindrical cavaliers defended the western front. Narrow postern passages led into the bastions from courtyard level. The curtain walls contained casemates, and a palace was built alongside the northern curtain.

In this form, the castle became one of the most powerful fortresses in Volhynia, safeguarding the treasures and trophies accumulated by the Ostrogskis and their successors. It successfully withstood Cossack forces in 1648 and Muscovite forces in 1660. In 1683, Teofila Zasławska, daughter of Władysław Dominik Zasławski-Ostrogski, Voivode of Kraków, and Katarzyna Sobieska, brought the castle and the entire entailed estate as her dowry to Józef Karol Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of the Crown. Before this, however, a prolonged dispute over ownership of these estates had broken out between Teofila, Katarzyna Sobieska and the Knights of Malta. After Teofila’s death, the castle belonged to her son, Aleksander Dominik Lubomirski. When he died without issue, it passed to her son-in-law, Paweł Karol Sanguszko. In 1753, Paweł Karol’s son, Janusz Aleksander Sanguszko, burdened by debt, carried out the so-called Kolbuszowa Transaction, dividing the Ostrogski entail among the Commonwealth’s magnate families, including several members of the Lubomirski family. The Sejm finally approved the dissolution of the entail in 1766. Dubno, together with 70 villages, went to Stanisław Lubomirski, Voivode of Kyiv and Bratslav.

A Period of Prosperity

Under Stanisław, Dubno flourished following the transfer from Lviv of the so-called contract fairs, which were economically important and provided occasions for numerous social gatherings. During the ownership of Stanisław and his son Michał, the neglected castle was restored and its palace remodelled in the Neoclassical style. The resulting two-storey building had seventeen bays and an elongated quadrilateral plan, with a plain, austere façade articulated only by a stringcourse between the storeys. The entire structure was covered by a hipped roof. A vestibule and staircase occupied the central axis of the ground floor. Decorated with stuccowork bearing the Lubomirski and Ostrogski coats of arms, this space separated two drawing rooms from a long, high dining hall. Among the grandest rooms was the double-height ballroom. Eleven Corinthian columns encircled the space, supporting a gallery and a musicians’ balcony. The interiors were decorated with stuccowork, of which a frieze depicting dancing bacchantes survives. Behind the castle, across the Ikva, a park known as Palestine extended over an artificial island. It was laid out in 1792 to a design by the celebrated landscape gardener Dionizy Mikler.

The Castle in the Nineteenth Century and Today

Abandoned by the debt-ridden Józef Lubomirski, the castle was sold in 1876, together with the entire Dubno estate complex, to Princess Elżbieta Bariatynska. The princess soon handed the neglected residence over to the Russian government, which installed military administrative offices there. An Orthodox church was established in the former ballroom, while the walls and bastions, left unmaintained and exposed to the elements, gradually deteriorated. During the First World War, the complex suffered extensive damage, particularly the palace, which lost its roofs and floors under Austrian artillery fire. The burnt-out main walls of the castle buildings were finally repaired during the Second Polish Republic. Between 1932 and 1939, the Polish authorities restored the gate and palace to designs by Józef Nowak, intending to use them as offices for the district administration. During the Second World War, the castle housed an NKVD prison. Shortly after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Soviet forces massacred prisoners there. After 1945, the castle served as barracks for armoured troops. Since 1991, the restored castle has functioned as a museum.