Połoneczka used to belong to the Radziwiłł family. The brick palace was built by the young Prince Matthias Radziwill and became a centre of local cultural life. Perhaps the residence will regain its lustre after its turbulent fate, as it has gained new owners.

The Radziwiłłs and their Połoneczka estate
The village of Polonochka is located north of the town of Baranovichi, in the north-eastern part of the Baranovichi District, Brest Region, Belarus. From the beginning of the 18th century until World War II, the estate was owned by the Radziwiłłs, who called themselves "counts of Połoneczka". From 1771, the estate was owned by Matej (1749-1800), who later became Castellan of Vilnius. He built a brick palace in Polonitsa, which became the young prince's main residence and a centre of local cultural life. However, no views of it have survived.

In the Memoirs of Ewa Felińska (1793-1859), one can read descriptions of the festive parties held there, given to her by her mother, Zofia Wendorffowa: "Połoneczka's entertainments bore the hallmark less of a rich man stewarding his abundance to the full and wanting to shine with splendour, as of a man with taste, seeking to please his own tastes and satisfy the need of a mind that feels pleasure in occupation. In Polonecka, the arrangement of the house, feasts and entertainments was most often the fruit of Prince Matthias' own thoughts. He himself arranged occasional plays, improvised poems, added music, devised decorations, created rooms for games, in characters appropriate to the circumstances". For Maciej Radziwill was a thoroughly educated man, composer and writer. His best known work was the libretto to one of the first Polish operettas Agatka czyli przyjazd pana (Agatha or the Arrival of a Gentleman) with music by Jan Dawid Holland. The premiere took place on 17 September 1784 in Nieświeże, in the presence of King Stanisław August. Radziwiłł was also the author of the libretto and music for the opera The Alderman of the Albanian Settlement, staged for the first time on 4 November 1786 in Alba near Nesvizh during the name-day of his cousin, Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł, known as Panie Kochanku.

Palace in Połoneczka - architecture
. After the death of Maciej Radziwill, the estate was taken over by his son Konstanty Mikolaj (1793-1869), who - probably after his marriage to Maria from the Grabowski family (1788-1826) in 1815 - began rebuilding the palace, giving it the forms that have been preserved to this day. The palace's appearance at the time is known from a watercolour by Napoleon Orda created between 1864 and 1867. The building consisted of a two-storey main body with a three-axis central part, covered with pilasters in the great order, topped with a triangular pediment, divided on the first floor by characteristic hermaic pilasters. The main body was connected by galleries with one-storey side pavilions on a square plan. This plan was a reference to simplified Palladian solutions with galleries connecting the body with a chisalitic (protruding) central part with side pavilions, popular at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The original decoration is worth mentioning - the split of the risalit's elevation and the galleries from the side of the garden with hermatic pilasters reduced in form to bearded male heads.

The chateau survived unchanged until the First World War, when it was partly destroyed. Adjacent to its northern wing was a spacious orangery, possibly built slightly later than the palace, around 1850, in the then popular neo-Gothic style. It was destroyed during the war, remained in ruins in the interwar period, and no longer exists.

Radziwiłł Palace in Połoneczka in the memories of its guests
. The Polonecka residence appears in the memories of its visitors. The most extensive description was given by the writer and ethnographer Edward Chłopicki (1826 or 1830-1894) in his Cards from a Travel Portfolio, published in 1869 in the Warsaw weekly 'Kłosy'. He devoted particular space to the palace library. It contained a book collection of some four thousand volumes, with a predominance of Polish and French books, stored in carved, glazed mahogany cabinets, the upper shelves of which were accessible from a gallery circling the room, as well as a numismatic collection, a collection of engravings, maps and globes. The residence also housed a collection of handicrafts: collections of fabrics, including kontusz belts, and glassware, both 18th century, from Radziwiłł manufactories (in Urzecz and Naliboki) and earlier, as well as a collection of family historical memorabilia.

A family archive was also kept in Połoneczka, containing mainly estate records, created by Maciej Radziwiłł, castellan of Vilnius, who, during the period of his guardianship over Dominik Hieronim Radziwiłł (1786-1813), ordinate of Nesvizh and Olytsk, moved some of the records from Nesvizh to Połoneczka. The archive was expanded by Konstanty Radziwill and his successors.

The palace also housed a number of family portraits, of which Chłopicki wrote that "their brushwork is generally mediocre, but the figures in armour and old-fashioned clothes, with the features of most of the family clearly visible, are very interesting". His attention was drawn to the portraits of Duke Constantine's three wives. One of them, a depiction of Celestyna née Sulistrowska (1805-1836), painted by Franciszek Ksawery Lampi (1782-1852), has survived and is now in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw.

Surroundings of the Radziwiłł palace in Połoneczka
. The residence was surrounded by an extensive garden with regular flower parterres and a rose garden near the palace, and further on - a landscape park with a poplar access avenue. Very interesting is the high cross described by diarists, placed in the park, at the foot of which Konstanty Radziwill ordered the burial of the heart of his beloved wife, Celestyna née Sulistrowska. This monument was placed in a place visible from the windows of the prince's bedroom. At the same time, it constituted an important ideological element in the landscape park surrounding the palace, both as a remembrance of a dear person and as part of the romantic tradition of erecting tombs in parks. After Konstanty's death, a burial chapel was built next to this monument.

Palace in Połoneczka - further fate
Konstanty's son and heir, Maciej Jozef Radziwill (1842-1907) after his marriage to Jadwiga of Krasinskis (1843-1913) in 1862 settled in Zegrze - his wife's dowry estate - near Warsaw, and after his father's death, moved the archives and more valuable equipment of the Połoneczka Palace there. In 1939. Germans took almost all the equipment of Zegrze to Płock, including the archive coming from Połoneczka. The collections survived and were placed in public resources after the war. The archive of the Radziwiłłs from Połoneczka was included in the stock of the Archiwum Główny Akt Dawnych in Warsaw, and the book collection was included in the National Library in Warsaw. After the death of Maciej Radziwill (1907) Połoneczka was inherited by his son, Albert Stanisław, who bequeathed the estate to his nephew, Władysław Radziwill - the last owner of Połoneczka.

The palace was devastated during the First World War and never returned to its former glory. The Second World War brought further destruction. After 1945, the building was used as a boarding school. At that time, it was also repaired - the damaged hermaic pilasters were removed (now surviving only on the first floor of the main body) and the interior layout was transformed. The layout of the garden and the park layout is nowadays illegible.

In 1999, the abandoned and devastated building was put up for sale, but it did not gain new owners until 2020. Slowly, steps are being taken to tidy up the grounds and gradually renovate the palace.