It goes back to the times of King Casimir III the Great, who founded here a town in accordance with the Magdeburg Rights in the 14th century.

The head of the family, Otton Pilecki, was a close friend of the king and his wife, Jadwiga, became the godmother to the future successor, Władysław II Jagiełło (1352–1434).

[4] In 1629, Łańcut became the property of Stanisław Lubomirski, governor of Ruthenia and Count of Wiśnicz, who in 1647 became the prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

It was Lubomirski who erected, according to Maciej Trapola's design, the quadrilateral castle with corner donjons surrounded by fortifications.

In the late 17th century, after the 1688 fire, Stanisław Lubomirski hired Tylman van Gameren, a Dutch-born Polish architect and engineer, who restored the castle.

She employed prominent artists such as Szymon Bogumił Zug, Jan Christian Kamsetzer, Chrystian Piotr Aigner, Fryderyk Bauman and Vincenzo Brenna.

They carried out a major overhaul and rearrangement of the large Łańcut estate, at the same time providing the 17th-century structure with electricity, water pipes, sewers, and central airflow heating.

Roman and Elżbieta Potocki hired a French architect, Amand Louis Bauqué, and a graphic designer Albert Pio, who worked on new stylistic transformations and arrangement of the residence.

The castle also received an impressive collection of paintings and sculptures purchased mainly during numerous trips made by the couple and later by the Duchess, who was very creative and constantly looking for artistic inspirations.

In fact, even today, in spite of all the later alterations and modernisations, the castle largely retains the character which it received in the course of the few decades, until Duchess Izabela Lubomirska's death in 1816.

One of them, called the Mirror Salon, is ornamented with a valuable rococo boiserie featuring magnificent polychrome wood-carvings depicting symbols of the four seasons.

After the castle was turned into a museum, the decoration was replaced by a classicist style fabric featuring the pattern of vertical pink and cream stripes.

The one on display today was reconstructed in the 1990s, its colours and pattern being a copy of the fabric made in Lyon, based on the preserved parts of the original.

[12] On the first floor, we can also see a complex of classicist reception rooms created for the Duchess, among those the most noteworthy two-storey Ballroom, ornamented with honey-coloured, polished wood carvings, and white engravings in the overdoor and frieze parts, all by Bauman; the Great Dining Room and chapel were all designed by Chrystian Piotr Aigner and Bauman.

The Duchess had the walls and ceiling decorated with illusionist design, which transformed the interior into a gazebo located amongst ruins, overgrown with grapevine and hollyhocks.

It is a portrait sculpture depicting Henryk, the beloved pupil of Duchess Lubomirska, presented as the ancient god Eros by Antonio Canova.

Following the Duchess' wish, in the castle's closest proximity Aigner build the library pavilion, and in cooperation with Bauman who supplied rich stucco ornaments, the classicist orangery, and the gloriette on the north-western bastion.

Additionally, in the former farms which were part of the estate before 1944, visitors can see numerous well-preserved objects marked with the Potocki family's emblem, or with the owners' initials.