Attractions and Places To See around Ceranów - Top 20

Entrance to the grounds is after purchasing tickets. The ticket office is opposite the gate. Parking, restrooms, and a souvenir shop are located nearby.

Sterdyń, as a small town located far from the main communication routes, never played a major historical role. However, we know that the inhabitants of the Sterdyń land took part in the January Uprising and also provided selfless help to the insurgents, for which the tsarist authorities imposed severe repressions on them. For this reason, Sterdyń lost its city rights in 1869. In the second half of the 19th century, persecution of the Uniates took place, and in 1905 peasant uprisings were recorded. In 1863, the tsarist authorities carried out the emancipation of the peasants. On the hundredth anniversary (1963), a monument commemorating this event was erected on the Sterdyń market square. During World War I, Russian troops burned down over 1/3 of the buildings in Sterdyń. During World War II, the inhabitants helped or participated in actions organized by the AK districts "Sęp" and "Proso". For this reason, the Germans shot about 400 people. During the occupation, there was also a ghetto in Sterdyń. 400 people of Jewish origin died there. The remaining Jewish population was transported to the nearby extermination camp in Treblinka. In the first years after the war, the residents of Sterdyń also experienced dramatic events at the hands of the people's government. An example of this is the execution of Józef Myszko, the village mayor of Sewerynówka. Józef Myszko helped unknown partisans. Accused of aiding bandits and considered an enemy of the people, he was sentenced by a "court" in the form of UB officers to death by shooting. The sentence was carried out immediately in front of the forcibly gathered residents of Sterdyń. The "trial" and the sentence took place in the market square on December 28, 1946. The murdered man was 37 years old.

The village was mentioned in 1446. In the 16th century, it was the property of Brykcy Chądzyński, then Kiszków. In 1622, Sterdyń was inherited by Anna Iwanowska from Kiszków, the wife of the cup-bearer of Drohicz Jakub Iwanowski of the Łodzia coat of arms, and then, as a dowry, it was received by the daughter of Anna and Jakub Iwanowski, Barbara, the wife of the starost of Drohicz, the castellan of Czersk Zbigniew Ossoliński. In this way, from 1643 to 1706, the village remained in the hands of the Ossolińskis. From 1709 to around 1726, it was the property of Wiktoryn Kuczyński, the castellan of Podlasie. Wiktoryn Kuczyński (born 1668), active in many fields, a participant in the political events of his time, a supporter of King Stanisław Leszczyński, exposed himself to Russian persecution - the devastation of his estates and the imprisonment of his son. Active in the field of economy, he floated grain on the Nurzec, Bug and Vistula rivers to Gdańsk with his own ships. He died in 1738 and was buried with the Benedictine nuns in Drohiczyn. In the 18th and early 19th centuries Sterdyń belonged to the Ossolińskis again, including the starost of Sulejów Stanisław Ossoliński. In 1809 Józef Wawrzyniec Krasiński married Emilia Ossolińska and received the Sterdyń estates from her hand. Józef Wawrzyniec Krasiński (1783–1845) was a writer, translator and memoirist, an activist of the Warsaw Charitable Society, decorated for his Napoleonic campaigns with the Golden Cross of Virtuti Militari and the French Legion of Honour, senator castellan of the Kingdom of Poland. Together with the hand of his daughter Paulina Sterdyń it passed in 1849 to Ludwik Górski (1818–1908), an outstanding agricultural activist, socially engaged, founder of the Agricultural Society, publicist. A devout Catholic, through his connections among cardinals he had considerable influence in Rome. Pope St. Pius X personally decorated him with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Pius IX. After Ludwik Górski's death the estate was taken over by Kazimierz Krasiński, and then by his son Franciszek Krasiński. The estate remained in the hands of the Krasińskis until the end and around 1930 it had 2,300 hectares.

The following died at that time: the commander of the 3rd squadron of the 6th Brigade, Senior Sergeant Józef Babicz Żwirko, Corporal Franciszek Januszkiewicz Zbieg, Private Jan Małyszko Grom and Private NN Serdeczny. In November 2005, thanks to the efforts of the "Pamiętamy" Foundation, a monument commemorating these soldiers was erected next to the chapel in Kiełpiniec. Symbolic crosses of the fallen are also located on both sides of the road at the entrance to the village. A concrete grave fenced with a low wooden fence is dedicated to the unknown Home Army soldier who died in 1941 or 1942. On the edge of the village on the opposite side of the road, there is only a wooden cross without an inscription commemorating the death of two uhlans from 1920. The bodies of these two soldiers were ceremoniously transported to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Sterdyń on the fifteenth anniversary of regaining independence. R. Murawski says: "The exhumation was accompanied by crowds of people.

In Kiełpiniec, a strong and well-armed Home Army unit was formed under the command of a teacher, Lieutenant Lucjusz Gawryś, pseudonym "Ryś". The activities of the Home Army and life in Kiełpiniec during the war are described in detail by a member of the unit, Juliusz Lemke, in his book "Było, minęła". Landed estates played a significant role in the functioning of military structures. In the Sokołów district, the "Uprawa" organization operated. Within its framework, Władysław and Józef Murawscy from Zagórze provided assistance in providing provisions to the units. The surrounding forests provided shelter to the fighting men and civilians. During the march of the front, Father Marian Podstawka, Sister Sebastian Moskwa, and many residents of Chądzyn and the surrounding areas found shelter in the Smolarnia forester's lodge with Paweł Andrzejewski. During the march of the front, the residents of Kiełpiniec, usually with all their belongings, waited out these difficult days in mounds in the forests near the village. On August 10, 1944, Kiełpiniec was liberated. Unfortunately, the dissolution of the Home Army did not mean the end of the war. Fighting continued. On February 17, 1947, in buildings outside the village belonging to Franciszek Goworek, four partisans of the 6th Wilno Brigade of the Home Army, commanded by Captain Władysław Łukasiuk Młot, were killed.

The Parish Cemetery contains the graves of heroes who fought during World War II and those who died fighting against the communist authorities after 1945.

The painted decoration of the palace in Sterdyń is attributed to Adam Byczkowski (ca. 1756–1820?), a student of Tombari and Brenna, co-author of the polychromes in the palaces in Natolin, Wilanów and Radziejowice.

All thanks to the idea of making the oval palace courtyard the centre, the shape of which is repeated by the arched, ground-floor annexes covered with gable roofs. The sections of the wall connecting the annexes with the corps de logis also adapt to the oval shape. This layout was most probably created in the years 1797–1806 on the initiative of Stanisław Ossoliński according to the designs of Jakub Kubicki (1758–1833), a renowned architect, the author of, among others, the palace in Młochów, the Warsaw Belweder and the city tollgates, as well as the author of the reconstruction of the Castle and the former annex in Radziejowice. Kubicki did not erect the Sterdyń layout ex nihilo. The body of the palace retained the shape of the seat built most probably in the 1680s for Jerzy Ossoliński. The two-story, central projection on both sides, higher by a mezzanine storey and topped with a triangular pediment, covered with a hipped roof, was in line with the classicizing Baroque of Tylman van Gameren (Gamerski). There is a clear resemblance to the beautiful Gniński palace designed by Gamerski on Tamka Street in Warsaw. However, was Gamerski the author of the Sterdyń palace project? There is no direct evidence for this. Kubicki added architectural detail – blind balustrades under the windows, segmental cornices and pediments above the windows; he covered the lower storey with rustication, added a column portico on the axis, consisting of two pairs of Doric columns supporting a small balcony, and built a large belvedere with high walls pierced with semicircular openings. He completely changed the silhouette of the Sterdyń palace and gave the building a character of severe classicism, which we encounter in a slightly different version in the palace in Młochów. Perhaps the inspiration for this unusual form was the belvedere of the Łazienki in Warsaw. After all, their author Dominik Merlini was once Kubicki's teacher, so why shouldn't he have reached for the model of one of his master's most outstanding works? The interiors of the palace retained their original seventeenth-century layout with a ceremonial staircase and bel-étage on the first floor. However, the rooms received a completely new painterly decor. The walls and ceilings were covered with grotesque-floral motifs, oak branches tied with ribbons, and sphinxes and griffins appeared in antithetical poses next to vases and tripods. One of the rooms on the first floor deserves special attention, where among the grotesque decoration with depictions of Apollo and the Muses in medallions and winged figures holding cornucopias there were rectangular panels with sentimental-romantic landscapes. The fashion for sentimental-romantic landscapes forced them not only to be painted on the walls of rural residences, such as Sterdyń, Mała Wieś or Rybienko, but also to materialize in Siedlce Aleksandria, Nieborów Arkadia, in the parks of Jabłonna, Powązki and Mokotów.