Situated where the Czechówka River flows into the Bystrzyca and surrounded by marshes, the Castle Hill was a difficult place to conquer. This favourable natural location was the reason why, probably in the 6th c., an early-medieval defensive settlement was established on the very hill. A Gothic castle built by Casimir the Great in the first half of the 14th c. was ruined during wartime in the second half of the 17th c. and consequently demolished in the 18th c. The only remnants of the old castle are the 13th-century Romanesque tower called a donjon, the Gothic Holy Trinity Royal Chapel and a fragment of the Gothic Jewish Tower. The present neo-Gothic castle was built in the years 1824-26 and served as a prison used by Austrian and Russian Partition authorities, German occupants and also by the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland till 1954. The castle is the seat of the Lublin Museum, which has countless valuable exhibits displayed in archaeological, numismatic, ethnographic and military departments. The gallery of paintings boasts the famous painting ‘The Union of Lublin’ by Jan Matejko as well as many other interesting art works by Polish and foreign artists.