History

Balice, one of the oldest settlements in the Kraków area, belonged to the Toporczyk family, which took its place in Polish history in the early 11th century.

Balice was first mentioned in the papal bull of 1229 as Belici. One of Balice's owners, governor Grzegorz, known as Żegociec, took part in a late-13th-century revolt against the Kraków duke Leszek Czarny, for which the duke confiscated his estate and sentenced him to death. However, the Toporczyk family returned to Balice in the early 15th century, giving Poland a number of eminent personalities. In 1412, Andrzej of Balice represented the Polish knights in a knight's tournament in Buda. In 1416, he was one of the Polish delegates to the Council in Constance, and also was a royal envoy. In 1444, Jan and Mikołaj of Balice fought against the Turks at Varna.

With the passage of time, the Toporczyk family of Balice assumed the name of Balicki from the name of their family residence. When they moved their main residence to Ossolin near Sandomierz, they changed their name to Ossoliński. In 1493, due to an unpaid debt, the Ossolińskis lost Balice to Seweryn Boner. Seweryn was a nephew of Jan Boner, who was a town councillor, an administrator of salt mines, and a banker of King Zygmunt the Old. Seweryn Boner was a man of the Renaissance, a humanist, and a patron of the arts. After the fire of the wooden palace in Balice in 1535, he built a brick palace in the shape of an Italian Renaissance villa. Balice was in full bloom during the time of the Boners; among other things, a royal mint and a paper mill for the first Polish printing houses were established here.

With time, thanks to family connections, Balice became the property of the Firlej family. During their time, Balice was often used by the Polish Crown as a residence for special guests. In July 1553 Catherine, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I and future wife of King Zygmunt August, spent the night there. King Zygmunt August sent a grand royal carriage, drawn by eight horses, to escort her from Balice. In February 1574, Jan Firlej, the Great Marshal of the Crown and voivode of Kraków, entertained the future king of Poland, Henryk Walezy, in Balice. Walezy came to Balice a second time to present Henryk, the son of Jan Firlej, for baptism. Under Jan Firlej, Balice became a centre of Calvinism.

In 1595, Cardinal Gaetano, the envoy of Pope Clement VIII stayed in Balice during his visit to Poland regarding the league against the Turks. For three days Cardinal Gaetano was the guest of the Kraków voivode Mikołaj Firlej, and took delight in the local garden, which boasted fig trees, apricot trees and grapevines, very rare in Poland at that time. During the Swedish invasion of Poland 1655-1657, the Swedish army plundered and destroyed the Balice palace, which then gradually fell into ruin. It regained its splendour for some time when it became the property of Jan Szembek, the Great Chancellor of the Crown, but began to deteriorate under his successors. It later changed hands to become the property of the Radziwiłł family.

We owe the present shape of the building to Prince Dominik Radziwiłł, who thoroughly reconstructed the palace between 1887 and 1894, after the design by Tadeusz Stryjeński. At that time the remains of the Renaissance Boner palace were found in the basement.

After the Second World War, Balice was handed over to the Jagiellonian University. In 1946 the then Vice Chancellor, eminent geneticist and animal scientist Teodor Marchlewski established the Zootechnical Experimental Station there. In 1950, this was transformed into the National Research Institute of Animal Production, currently responsible for the administration of Balice. In the 1980s, the Institute carried out a complete refurbishment of the Balice palace, restoring it to its former splendour.

National Research Institute Of Animal Production

The National Research Institute of Animal Production is one of the largest Polish scientific research institutes accountable to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The Institute, now headed by Prof. dr hab. Jędrzej Krupiński, has six scientific departments and 12 experimental stations all over Poland. The Institute's mission is to carry out research in the field of animal and related sciences with a view to the current and future production of safe food under animal and enviromentally friendly conditions, and to use farm animals for biomedical purposes. The research covers five areas:

Today, the National Research Institute of Animal Production has a staff of over 110 researchers, including over 30 professors and associate professors, and 77 doctors. During the 50 years of the Institute's history, more than 40 employees of the Institute received the title of professor, over 60 were awarded a post-doctoral degree, over 200 earned a Ph.D. degree, and four were awarded an honorary doctorate.

In 1996, the Institute in Kraków was entrusted with the task of coordinating activities for the conservation of genetic resources of farm animals in Poland. Seventy-five most valuable Polish breeds, strains and varieties are under protection.

The Institute has modern and well-equipped laboratories, including specialist equipment used in experiments on reproductive biology of farm animals. In this respect, the Institute's scientists have recently achieved three important successes:

Two of the above research successes - the birth of a transgenic boar and of a cloned rabbit - were ranked by the Polish Rzeczpospolita daily among the 14 greatest scientific achievements in Poland in 2003.

Major research areas of the National Research Institute of Animal Production

Publications

The National Research Institute of Animal Production offers the following services:



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