Attractions of Verkhivnia

The Empire-style palace with antique motifs in the decor was built in 1800 by the Italian architect Blerio Count V. Gansky, who inherited the estate of Verkhivnya from his father Jan Gansky. The count presented the estate with a palace and outbuildings, a large landscape park and a tomb church to his young wife Evelina of the Rzewuski family, who was considered one of the first beauties in Poland. From here, Evelina began a secret correspondence with Honore de Balzac, signing under the pseudonym "Foreigner". Their first meeting in Switzerland soon took place, but only 15 years later, when Evelina's husband died, was the writer able to come to the Supreme. In Balzac's surviving office, on the second floor of the palace, is a table at which he wrote "The Deputy from Arcy," "The Petty Bourgeois," "The Theater That He Is," and the drama "Stepmother." The interior of Balzac's bedroom has not survived - there are portraits of the novelist performed by his contemporaries. The Balzac Memorial Museum is located in these rooms. Other rooms of the palace are occupied by the agrotechnical college, restoration is underway.