A first fortress near the strategically important Brynica River on the road from Bytom to Częstochowa was erected in the 11th century at the behest of the Polish king Bolesław I Chrobry.

When the Hohenzollern estates in Silesia were seized by the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II after the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, he gave Świerklaniec in pawn to his money lender Lazarus I Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Elevated to Reichsgrafen in 1651, the Protestant Tarnowitz-Neudeck branch of the House of Donnersmarck had the Old Castle rebuilt in a Renaissance style with extended gardens and again redesigned during the Baroque era.

His son, the industrial magnate Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck (1830-1916) had the New Castle erected from 1868 onwards, modelled on his Château de Pontchartrain near Paris.

Nevertheless, the Donnersmarcks retained their possessions and from 1922 to 1937, the former Swiss president Felix Calonder, as chairman of the mixed German-Polish commission, resided at the Cavalier Palace to supervise the execution of the Upper Silesian Convention.

Two pairs of lion statues survived, now decorating parks in Zabrze and Gliwice, as well as a wrought iron gate currently at the Silesian Zoological Garden in the Katowice and Chorzów districts of Silesia.