Unfortunately, all that remains of the medieval fortress today is a picturesque ruin, consisting of the remains of the ramparts and residential buildings, the entrance gate, an octagonal lowered keep, and a grated well (now only 20 metres deep).

Back in the Iron Age, there was a settlement of the Lusatian culture on the site where the castle stands, presumably destroyed by the Scythian invasion.

The castle was erected by order of Casimir the Great in the second half of the 14th century, at which time the Ojców estate was royal property. According to legend, Casimir the Great named the castle ‘Father at the Rock’ to commemorate the wandering of his father, Ladislaus the Short, who was hiding in one of the caves.  The name survives as Ojców. The castle was then managed by a burgrave, the first of whom was Zaklika, mentioned in 1370, acting here on behalf of the starost of Kraków.

During the reign of the Jagiellons, the Ojców Castle and several villages became a starosty independent of the Kraków starosty.  The documents mention a number of starosts at the Ojców Castle. There is no information from that time about the state of the castle. Only a preserved lustration from 1620 mentions that starost Mikołaj Koryciński took over the castle, which was very desolate, and partially restored it. After Mikołaj's death, the starosty passed to his sons, Mikołaj and later Stefan.

After the end of the Swedish wars, S. Koryciński set about restoring the castle, which was continued after his death by his widow, Anna Petronela Korycińska. A new residential house was then built, which was given the character of a starost's residence. The 1660 Lustration stated that building work had progressed considerably. It provided the first known description of the building and the entire hill, accessed via a drawbridge supported by pillars over a deep moat. The remains of two pillars survive on the right side in front of the entrance to the entrance gate.

The starosty, together with the Ojców Castle, then passed into the hands of Mikołaj Koryciński, after whom Jan Kazimierz Warszycki took it over. In the 18th century, the starosty came into the possession of the Łubieńskis and later, through family collations, into the hands of the Załuski family. The last of this family, Teofil Załuski, received King Stanisław August Poniatowski at his father's castle on 5 July 1787. The king first visited the Ciemna Cave and was then received in the richly decorated castle chambers, set with beautifully ornamented furniture. He was then invited to the castle chapel to hold the baptismal ceremony of Teofil Załuski's daughter, Maria Salomea.

After the Third Partition of Poland, rapid devastation began, although the last owners of the castle tried to partially restore the ruins.

According to surviving iconographic accounts and research, the condition of the castle in the first half of the 18th century was as follows: a wooden bridge spanning over a deep moat, having railings and supported by three pairs of masonry pillars led to the entrance gate. The two-storey gate building with a passage below and a chamber upstairs was crowned by a curb Polish roof. A fragment of a wall ran from the gate in an easterly direction, probably concealing the communication route in the upper part, and to the right of it, on a rectangular rocky promontory, now overgrown with trees, stood a magnificent two-storey residential building with a curb roof. The living area of the ground floor consisted of a vestibule in the main hall (from here ran the stairs to the cellars and the first floor), six rooms and two alcoves. Adjoining on the north side was the chapel (oriented), the ground plan of which is an elongated rectangle, running partly beyond the east elevation of the main building. The first floor had a similar layout with the difference that on the west side, there was one large, representative room instead of two rooms.  To the northwest of the residential area was a large walled courtyard, along which stood the outbuildings: a kennel, a shed, and two stables. Behind them was a fenced garden, a kitchen, and a chicken coop. In the middle of the courtyard, opposite the kitchen, there was a cased well, 48 m deep, hewn out of the rock; today, it is about 20 m deep, and its present brickwork dates from 1972. The whole complex was dominated by a tower (octagonal in plan from the 2nd half  of the 14th century, circular inside) with two storeys, on prisoners, to which an iron door was added, according to the inspection of 1789. The castle survived in this condition until the fall of the Republic in 1795. According to the quoted lustration, at the foot of the castle, there was also a manor farm, including a residence for the bursar, a bakery with a chamber, four pigsties, a coach house, a brewery, a distillery, an inn, a mill and a sawmill.

After the Third Partition of Poland, the process of rapid devastation of the Ojców Castle began.

In 1829, the Russian government sold Ojców to Konstantin Wolicki, who demolished the castle walls. Only the entrance gate, octagonal tower, and defensive walls were left standing.

In the 19th century, several attempts were made to restore or even rebuild the castle. At the end of the 19th century, Ludwik Krasiński made concrete plans, intending to set up an archaeological and natural history museum inside the castle after its restoration. Having gathered the building material, he proceeded with the first works, during which the bridge was removed, the moat filled in, and the octagonal tower was lowered by about 6 m due to the poor strength of its walls. Restoration work was limited to the restoration of the entrance gate.  The death of L. Krasiński interrupted further conservation work. His daughter, Ludwika Czartoryska, became the owner of Ojców. The new owner in 1913 set about conserving the ruins and partially restoring the tower. At that time, a fireplace in the tower and a staircase on its lower floor were built.

In 1980, the Council of the Ojców National Park set up the Ojców Castle Reconstruction Committee, with the aim not so much of reconstructing the building as of coordinating research and conservation work.  The Committee did not develop any concrete activities, and after the tragic death of its chairman, Professor Bolesław Kordas, in 1981, it virtually disintegrated. In 1989, the Park management undertook minor conservation work on the gate building under the supervision of conservator Antoni Kostrzewa, with funding from the Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments in Kraków. The interior of the gate was plastered and the lower parts of the walls were partially protected. More extensive conservation and research work was carried out in 1991. This included the castle courtyard and the eastern section of the residential part of the castle, as well as the reconstruction of the shingle roofs of the entrance gate and tower, conservation work on the gate building and plastering of the interior of the gate and partial protection of the lower parts of the walls.

All that remains of the former castle building today are the picturesque ruins, consisting of the remains of the ramparts and residential parts, the tower and the entrance gate. Today, you can visit the gate tower with a model, the tower with an exhibition and the courtyard. You can see a nice panorama of the Prądnik Valley from the castle ruins. In the depths, you can see Mt Chełmowa and, at the foot of Mt Zamkowa, Zamkowy Park and the former spa buildings: ‘Pod Kazimierzem’ and ‘Pod Łokietkiem.’The room above the entrance gate housed the PTTK Regional Museum until 1988, when it was moved to the ‘Bazar Warszawski’ building. The room currently houses an exhibition on the history of the Ojców Castle, mounted in 1996. Of note is a model showing the castle from the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, designed by Wojciech Bosak. Temporary exhibitions are also held here.

Leaving the ruins of the castle, we notice on the right a statue of the Virgin Mary which, according to local tradition, dates from 1863 and was erected here by Jan Zawisza, the owner of Ojców. It initially stood in the castle courtyard when a chapel was planned for the castle ruins, and then remained in a box among the ruins.