(gentle music)
- This is Poland's most beautiful abandoned palace,
like a fairytale tucked away in a tiny village
in the far, far West.
Notoriously difficult to enter,
and its future is uncertain.
We're one of the very first to be granted entry.
I'm here with my photographer,
urban explorer friend, Wojtek.
Our goal today, to see what's left,
and try to get here,
to the top of the main tower.
But first, though,
a word from the sponsor,
which is you.
"Fearless and Far" is supported by my Patreon page.
There, I post an extra video every week
about fighting the fears in your life,
and I post videos that could get me demonetized on YouTube.
Like this one.
This video was a little bit too dark
for my normal YouTube channel.
So, I put it on Patreon.
And like I said, it's the best way to support the channel.
If you want to support Fearless and Far,
and also get to see pretty creepy,
crazy videos like this.
Check out the Patreon page,
the true dragons are there.
(calm music)
We're inside.
I really don't know what to expect here.
Basically all like in deduce is
that it's a palace,
and I guess I didn't know the difference
between a palace and a castle before.
But if you have a spectrum
palace, castle, fort or fortress,
a palace isn't meant to be defended,
and a fortress is in a castle
somewhere in the middle.
So we always talk about abandoned castles,
but there's just as many abandoned palaces used for parties,
entertaining guests,
and not so much for defending strategic locations.
So in a place like this,
you'll see things like this.
(gentle music)
These beautifully carved staircases,
meant to impress guests,
as well as urban explorers.
Look at the ceiling though,
all carved wood.
There was gold trim there,
that's slowly fallen off.
(gentle music)
This is Bozkow Palace.
One of the few grand residences,
which survive in this region.
It dates back to the late 1500s
with renovations happening until 1940.
Then we all know what happened.
(suspenseful music)
Poland was in pieces and handed over to the Soviets,
the lesser of two evils.
Nobility were tossed their castles and palaces.
The USSR took everything,
all bowed to Joseph Stalin, communism and Mother Russia.
This place was wrecked,
pillaged and then left to crumble.
The wooden banisters, the fireplaces,
art and plaster of the walls still survive.
The rest taken, hidden, for good or for bad.
At least it would suffer a different fate than here.
So, I still can't get over this art
that is all over the walls.
This is an old fireplace.
I don't really know how it works. A fire would go here.
Smoke would go up there. Ashes would fall down.
Keeping in mind, this place was for parties.
The vast majority of these rooms would be meant for,
there we go, look at this
(laughing)
dancing.
(gentle classical music)
I'm not sure if this is the main ballroom,
but damn, it's a nice one.
(upbeat electronic music)
Next room.
Let's go.
One thing I'm really happy not to see
in this place is graffiti.
There's none,
normally in places like this.
I think this was a bedroom.
Look at these really cool tiles,
hand painted tiles on the ceiling.
I'm assuming various characters from Polish folklore.
I wonder what this was.
Shall we dare?
A stove?
Was this used for cooking?
Esch Original, Esch Mannheim.
My guess German pizza oven.
Your guess? Let me know in the comments.
And this would be
another ballroom.
Small one, but a nice one.
A lot of these carvings are really cool.
For example, the woman's reflection
in the mirror is also carved in,
and she's holding a snake.
I don't know why,
but I like it.
(upbeat electronic music)
(Mike coughs)
Next room.
Oh, okay.
We're getting distracted, aren't we?
Let's see if we can find the stairs to the tower.
This place is just a twisting, turning, echoing maze.
(camera falls to ground)
You okay?
Still recording?
Great.
That's good.
Let's continue. Whoa!
Look at this safe.
One, two, three, four, five keys.
And unfortunately, it's locked.
Damn.
If I was a betting man,
I would say bathroom.
Marble wall.
Oh yeah. Look, sink.
Ooh, spiderwebs.
Not much left of the sink,
but what there is,
I guess that stays closed.
It's a pretty great view of the rest of the palace.
(gentle music)
All right, I'm backtracking a little bit
because I'm trying to find something
and maybe you can figure out what I'm trying to find.
And that is the tower.
I don't know if we can still get in the tower,
but first we have to find the staircase.
And this is not it, but wow.
Look at this carved wood.
I wish you could smell this room.
I don't know what mahogany smells like,
though Ron Burgundy told me it smelled nice,
but I imagine it's this.
It's a wood, right?
It's this perfumey dark wood.
Oh my God. Look at this.
What's that kids?
Motion detector to catch trespassers.
Luckily that's not us. We do have permission to be here.
So, you can't sneak into this place. Crazy.
This can't be the tower,
but it's a cool little add-on, maybe reading nook,
and ah, look at this amazing carved wood again.
Even more visible with this like gold leaf pattern carpet,
wallpaper?
Looks almost like it's velvet
or some kind of fabric.
Okay, the quest continues to find the tower.
Let's go.
Found it.
We walked by it twice.
Urban explorers, dragons, whatever you call yourself.
Let's visit the tower.
Ooh.
Why do I like these abandoned places?
Well, they tell stories,
whether it's a house in the woods
or a palace like this.
At one time, people danced
through these halls with happiness,
never thinking about how someone like us
would be exploring it with the camera.
I'm fascinated by these lost places
because I want to share their stories
before they're gone forever.
In this case,
a private owner purchased this palace,
hoping to renovate it into a hotel.
It cost a fortune to make it
and required another fortune to salvage it.
Sadly, he couldn't come up with the money.
Now chances are high this place will just fall to pieces.
And that's why we're here to share it before it does.
We found it.
I always love a good spiral staircase.
I wish I was counting these steps.
We are in the tower
with a wood,
a mud floor?
There is another set of stairs.
Let's take a peek out the window.
Oh, Poland.
You're so beautiful.
All right.
First piece of graffiti naked man, naked woman,
it kind of fits the place.
So I'm happy these wooden stairs are relatively new.
I think?
This place is 300 years old.
There's no way this wood is 300 years old,
so it looks at there have been renovations
to this place after all.
These towers always smell like pigeon (beep).
It's much more pigeons than people
in these places these days.
Oh my God, how high does it go?
Wow.
This would be a great spot
to boil porcupine quills
with frog tongues.
Wow.
This is about,
this is about as medieval as it gets.
What a place, some great views
of the surrounding countryside.
And a great spot to hang you upside down
for my outro.
This channel is called "Fearless and Far"
Listen, I'm not fearless.
I just like fighting them.
While an abandoned exploration
may or may not be a scary adventure,
depending on who you are.
The channel is about pushing yourself and growing,
by finding your fears and then head charging them.
My story I don't talk about that often is a wild one.
I was scared to speak most of my life.
I had anxiety attacks
whenever I'd turned on a camera
or even spoke to a friend,
I would literally panic.
And now I am at BBC presenter,
and I have professional YouTube channel.
This is my job,
speaking to the camera.
I was the worst person in the world,
opening my mouth and public speaking.
And now this is my job.
All because I chose to fight my fears,
to head charge my fears.
And that's what the channel is about,
that's what I want to encourage you guys to do too.
I've made a free workshop.
Hey! Mike from the future cutting in
for a quick second to let you know
by popular demand,
this worksheet has been upgraded
into an instructional video.
The top six things I did in my life
to pry it back from the clutches of fear.
All you need to do is go to fearlessandfar.com/fear.
drop in your email,
and you'll get it in your inbox.
Thanks for watching guys.
Hope you enjoyed the palace,
and I'll see you in the next video.
(gentle music)