Piotr Malecki for The New York Times  Wilanow Palace, on the outskirts of Warsaw. More Photos »  WHEN I was a little girl living in Texas and visited my family in Poland, my grandfather would always take us to palaces. He had been an art historian and curator of a couple of the palaces around Warsaw during some of Poland’s bleakest years of Communism, and even though I was too young to understand that era, or much of Poland’s complicated history, I knew that through these palaces, something about Poland and its once-luxurious glory had been preserved. My imagination conjured images of princesses running through lavishly decorated hallways and grand, echoing rooms.  Portrait of King Stanislaw August Poniatowski at Nieborow Palace, two hours from Warsaw. More Photos »  There are about 250 palaces in the province that surrounds Warsaw and about 2,800 throughout all of Poland. Most were built for kings or aristocrats in the 17th and 18th centuries; since then, government ministries have restored many of them, which now serve as museums.  Palaces outside the city make great day trip destinations, and most are accessible by bus or train. Last summer I spent a week palace-hopping in and around Warsaw, revisiting some of the palaces I’d seen when I was little. Here are five where I felt most transported to other eras of Polish history.  A pocket of opulence in a small, rural village about two hours west of Warsaw, the Nieborow Palace has changed very little since the aristocratic Radziwill family obtained it in the late 1700s. Built in 1694 for a cardinal, it exemplifies Polish Baroque architecture. It also has a frozen-in-time quality: the paths in the surrounding park remain unpaved; silver tableware is brought out for holidays. On New Year’s Eve, guests staying at the palace write down wishes for the coming year, burn them in the library and drop the ashes into their Champagne — just as the Radziwills had.  “Time moves slowly here, and the palace is the same as it was 200 years ago — same park, same rooms, same traditions,” Jan Prokopowicz, the palace archivist, told me.  Over many centuries, the Radziwills were one of the most prominent families in Poland. In 1959, Stanislaw Radziwill married Lee Bouvier, Jackie Kennedy’s sister, bringing the name into American consciousness. During the World War II occupation, the family lived in the palace together with high-ranking Nazi officers, while actively fighting against them in the underground movement, according to past curators.  Against all odds, the Radziwills — and the palace — survived. After the war Nieborow became a museum; my grandfather later became its curator for 25 years. Many times we walked through the 10 rooms that constitute the museum, looking at expensive furniture, tiled furnaces and a library of centuries-old books. We walked around the park, which encompasses wheat fields, rose bushes and ancient linden trees.  But the palace is more than a museum. In 1945, Stanislaw Lorentz, a friend of the Radziwills’ and the wartime director of the National Museum in Warsaw, turned it into a creative haven for artists fleeing war-torn — and later Communist — Warsaw. Well-known writers like Ryszard Kapuscinski and Tadeusz Borowski, the filmmaker Andrzej Wajda and foreign artists like Pablo Neruda were among Nieborow’s many rotating artists in residence.  A version of this artists’ colony still functions — guests dine together at a mahogany table adorned with vases of fresh flowers and stay in the third-floor guest rooms. (The guest rooms are mostly word-of-mouth — mainly for invited artists.)  The Royal Castle (Zamek Krolewski)  In the heart of Warsaw lies the Old Town, a network of cobbled streets, churches and colorful houses spreading out from the Royal Castle. Odd juxtapositions are not unusual. During our visit, horse-drawn carriages in front of the castle shared the stage with mohawked teenagers drumming on paint cans, suitcases and milk jugs. A man in folkloric dress sold roses near a modern dancer moving in the shadow of the castle tower.  The castle has been a focal point of the city since it was the primary residence of Polish kings, who ruled into the 18th century, and the seat of government. But just as the country has continually rebounded after centuries of partitions, wars and political upheaval, so has the Royal Castle. Time and again it was destroyed by fires and invading armies, and each time, it, too, was optimistically rebuilt.
On a tour of the countryâs palaces, the author is transported to earlier eras of Polish â and personal â history.