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The Polish foreign minister’s family estate — a ‘soft power’ house in the country
Radek Sikorski’s manor is part pastoral retreat and part instrument of diplomacy
Down a dirt road near the village of Chobielin, three and a half hours’ drive from Warsaw, a remote dwór — or traditional Polish manor house — has become an unlikely magnet for foreign dignitaries and high-profile visitors.
Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, has transformed the estate his parents bought just months before the fall of the Berlin wall into an instrument of diplomacy — a place where he also seeks to showcase his country’s recovery from decades of communist rule. Last year, David Lammy visited a few days after his appointment as Britain’s foreign secretary. More recently Sikorski welcomed Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha. Helicopters can land on the lawn, but guests generally drive in from Warsaw.
Together with his wife, the historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, Sikorski forms one of the country’s most prominent partnerships. While his public persona is often seen as blunt and outspoken, Sikorski’s welcome into his home is relaxed and warm; he is an affable host and enthusiastic raconteur, ever ready with stories about the history of his home and family. Despite commitments that take the couple round the world, Sikorski says they head for Chobielin dwór about two weekends a month. And when they aren’t hosting guests, they’ll write or set off on long cycling excursions.
With its brick-red tiled roof, white portico and buttery-yellow exterior, the house opens to an expansive lawn via an elegant stone staircase. For Sikorski, it serves as a more relaxed and persuasive arena than Warsaw’s official government buildings. “In western Europe people know very little about Poland, because we weren’t on the map in the 19th century and then we were behind the Iron Curtain,” he says. “When [people] come here, they see a bit of history; I explain how this area was settled, how our borders changed, how nevertheless we maintained our identity and historic continuity — so that they can understand Poland better.” It is, he adds, a mode of “soft power . . . This house can contribute to the idea of Polish success and Poland’s recovery from the nightmare of communism.”
Sikorski, a former journalist, has written a book about the history of his house. He traces its origins back to the 14th century, although the current structure was built in the 19th, when it belonged to German landowners who also owned a nearby sugar factory. Following Berlin’s defeat in the first world war, the family was among myriad Germans who abandoned Poland when it regained its independence and became a republic. After the second world war, Poland’s communist regime nationalised the estate and turned Chobielin dwór into a state-owned farm.
Sikorski’s parents bought the dilapidated property for the equivalent of $1,700 — which at the time was “probably the cost of buying two fancy cars”, he says. Restoration took 15 years, during which the family also acquired about 12 hectares of surrounding land, on which they installed a pond, a tennis court, a football pitch and a fruit and vegetable garden.
Today, the manor is layered with personal and political history. In the basement loo hangs a framed photograph of Sikorski and Boris Johnson, dressed in white tie alongside other members of Oxford university’s Bullingdon club in 1986. Sikorski also keeps a more recent picture of Johnson, in flowery red swimming trunks, preparing to dive into the manor’s pond, alongside a thank-you letter. In it, Johnson writes that he had “a fab time”, including “diving from a punt into the clean brown depths of your sturgeon-stocked lake” and “roaring around the countryside on your Soviet-era Zündapp”.
That motorcycle — a Wehrmacht-era BMW that was seized by the Red Army and later refitted by the Russians — still bears machinegun mounts and an ammunition box. “Was it also used during the cold war?” I ask. “Not yet, but possibly,” he replies with a wry smile.
It is now stored in Chobielin dwór’s former mill house, alongside several bicycles. The garage also has communist-era street signs on its walls that, as the Soviet bloc collapsed, Sikorski helped remove from Bydgoszcz, the nearby city where he was born.
Applebaum’s prolific writing is on full display in the library, alongside “Poland’s largest collection of books on the [Soviet] gulag”, according to Sikorski — part of the research for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the subject. The library, with its laden bookshelves and decorative carpets, also doubles as Sikorski’s office, from where he conducts television interviews. and video calls with political counterparts. “Covid changed our culture and I can absolutely work from here,” he says.
The house has been a discreet venue to advance domestic politics. Sikorski recalls a meeting here with Donald Tusk, then considering a return to Polish politics after his stint as European Council president. Tusk was duly re-elected as prime minister in 2023, after which he reappointed Sikorski as foreign minister. In July, Tusk reshuffled his cabinet and elevated Sikorski to deputy prime minister — fuelling speculation about succession. Sikorski dismisses such rumours as “completely manufactured”. He adds: “I also have a vivid imagination, but this isn’t happening.”
The walls carry echoes of older politics too. In an upstairs bedroom, historic maps show how Poland’s borders were redrawn over centuries of war and foreign occupation. Hanging in the brightly lit, flagstoned entrance hall, copper plates depict Polish manor houses once located in eastern territories that are now part of Ukraine. “The Ukrainian foreign minister recently had great fun looking at them,” Sikorski says with a chuckle.
Old weapons and decorations are also on display, from ornamental swords to a Finnish Suomi submachine gun from the 1940s in the library. Two decades ago, Sikorski served as Poland’s defence minister in the first government formed by the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party that was founded by Tusk’s long-standing opponent Jarosław Kaczyński. “When you are defence minister, you get given swords,” Sikorski says.
But Sikorski is now at loggerheads with Kaczyński, not only over politics but also more personal matters, including criticism by PiS of his wife, who holds both American and Polish citizenship. Shortly before my visit, Kaczyński questioned how she could have named one of her books “Matka Polka” (The Polish Mother”). Sikorski said that he came up with the title, “which was meant to be intriguing. But they [PiS] don’t do sense of humour, irony, they are only fighting for survival, every day of the week.”
In 2019, Sikorski’s application for subsidies to repair Chobielin dwór’s roof was rejected, in another episode that Sikorski attributes to Poland’s polarised politics. “The PiS politicians made a fuss that I even dared to apply [for subsidies]. When there is a problem with the structure of a listed building, everybody else is entitled to some help . . . but as a politician you don’t have these citizen rights.”
On his roof, Sikorski flies a large Polish flag. But in many ways the house also has an international feel, from its furniture to its gardens. Advice for the latter was sought from Canadian landscape architects Nori and Sandra Pope. The kitchen, designed by London-based Plain English, features a French Lacanche stove, the first imported into Poland, says Sikorski. Applebaum added a cookbook of Polish recipes to the house’s literary output.
The gardens remain Sikorski’s pride and joy, particularly his vines. “When we go cycling, Anne and I fill our water bottles with juice from our own grapes,” he says. “The best is to mix: half water and half grape.” On a hot summer afternoon, Chobielin feels like a timeless pastoral retreat. A hammock sways by the pond, flower beds surround the house and a treehouse is perched among the elms.
Yet reminders of Poland’s proximity to danger, with Russia’s war in neighbouring Ukraine, intrude. The estate requires discreet but visible protection; two men beside a black limousine stand and watch as we tour the grounds.
“You look a bit suspicious, so I’ve just gone to tell them not to shoot you while I leave you for a while,” Sikorski says lightly, moments before returning to his library to join another emergency meeting of EU ministers to discuss how to help Ukraine resist Russia.
Raphael Minder is the FT’s central Europe correspondent
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