The castle was erected at the expense of Jakub Sobieski (father of the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Jan III Sobieski) in 1634 as a defensive fortress designed by an unknown Italian architect on the site of an old wooden castle, which was surrounded by powerful earthen ramparts, lined with stone, with bastions at the corners and ditches ... There are two palaces in the courtyard of the castle. The largest of them is called the Grand Palace, and the Chinese Palace is located opposite the entrance tower. The castle is also interesting because it was the first sewerage system that has survived to this day. The castle is a Neogollandic type of defensive structure and belongs to the monuments of the "palazzo in fortezzo" type, that is, it combines the functions of defense and housing. The defensive structures of the Zolochiv Castle are ramparts, bastions, a gate tower, a bridge and a ravelin. From the time of foundation, ramparts, bastions, partly the gate building have survived, and the ravelin and the bridge have been reconstructed. In the castle courtyard, only the Chinese Palace, the Great Residential Palace and the gate tower, significantly rebuilt at the end of the 19th century, have survived. The entrance tower, the Chinese Palace, the Grand Residential Palace create a Renaissance ensemble. In August 2009, the Grand Palace of the Zolochiv Castle was opened for inspection. On the first floor of the Grand Palace, the exhibition halls show the history of the castle, prison time, the period of restoration, the Zolochev region. It also houses the palace chapel of the Annunciation, an exhibition hall, halls of the 17th and 18th centuries and the royal treasury with the reconstruction of the crown of Daniel Galitsky. On the second floor of the palace there is a department "Interiors of the period of historicism". On May 21, 2004, the Museum of Oriental Cultures was opened in the restored Chinese Palace of the Zolochevsky Castle. There is an oriental park with a gazebo around the Chinese Palace.