Kliczkow Castle is located 15 km from Boleslawiec, in a place where originally a wooden and stone stronghold was set upon the river Kwisa. It protected the only ford in the lower course of the river and closed the forest path from Lusatia to the country of Prince Mieszko. The castle played an important role stopping the count Geron of Eastern March, who tried to conquer the country of Polans. One hundred years later, the German emperor Henry V followed the same path and wanted to defeat Boleslaw Krzywousty in 1106. This resulted in the famous battle in Psie Pole and one of its effects was the decision of Krzywousty to build a stone castle in Kliczkow to serve to defend the road from Lusatia.

The castle’s rich history is filled with legends. One of them is the legend according to which Prince Boleslaw Krzywousty himself was to address his trusted knight Tomir with these words: ‘You have it (Kliczkow Castle) as a key to block the path for anyone who wants to attack the country from the west.’ He chose Tomir his wife, a widow from the Topolczan family, who was the daughter of one of the knights of Kalisz Prince. They lived a peaceful life for two years, until a young married husband was summoned by the prince to a military expedition to conquer Pomerania. The care of the castle was entrusted by Krzywousty to another warman – Bogdar from the Czech Republic. In the absence of her husband, Bogdar and Tomir’s wife began plotting to take Tomir’s life. And so when Tomir was on the way home from the war expedition, he was assaulted and thrown into the castle dungeons and the world was sent false news that Tomir was dead. Boleslaw Krzywousty believed it when he saw a bloody tunic of his devoted knight, and the bishop of Wroclaw gave a false widow an absolution. Tomir spent the next ten years locked up in the dungeons of Kliczkow Castle, probably hearing the sounds of the ‘widow of Tomir’ and Bogdar’s wedding. It was only after this period, during Bogdar’s absence from the castle, that Tomir, promising his brother Proslaw a treasure hidden in the forest, got free. He returned to Kliczkow Castle, captured Bogdar and his wife, who was his own ex-wife, and then threw them in a dungeon sentencing her to starvation. For Bogdar listening to the grumble of a fellow prisoner who was his wife complaining about her fate was meant to be an additional punishment. After two years in such conditions Bogdar decided to starve himself. The legend has it that tourists and residents of the hotel operating in the castle today apparently sometimes hear Czech speech coming from behind the walls which, as translated by tourists coming from the Czech Republic, means pleading directed by the ghost of Bogdar to his wife to stop grumbling. The same legend also says that Tomir took pity on his ex-wife and sent her to a female monastery in Saxony for penance. Anyway, her name has been lost somewhere over the centuries.

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