Łazienki Park
Łazienki Park, or the Royal Baths Park, is the largest park in Warsaw, Poland, occupying 76 hectares of the city center. The park-and-palace complex lies in the Downtown district, on Ujazdów Avenue, which is part of the Royal Route linking the Royal Castle with Wilanów Palace to the south.
In the mid-16th century the Łazienki area became part of the estates of Queen Bona Sforza, who ordered the construction of a wooden manor house with an Italian garden. In 1624 King Sigismund III Vasa erected, north of the present Łazienki Park, the quadrilateral stone Ujazdów Castle.
Most of the Łazienki Park buildings were originally designed in the 17th century by Tylman van Gameren in the Baroque style for military commander Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski, including an ornate bathing pavilion that eventually gave its name to the gardens. In 1764 King Stanisław II August obtained Ujazdów and extensively remodeled the gardens. In 1918, following Poland's resumption of independence, Łazienki was officially designated a public park.
The park's flora and fauna include over 9,500 trees and populations of peafowl and red squirrels. Bordering the park's southern side is the Belweder, a historic palace and now one of the official residences of the President of Poland.
History
Łazienki Park was designed in the 17th century by Tylman van Gameren, in the baroque style, for military commander Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski. It took the name Łazienki from a bathing pavilion that was located nearby.The picturesque garden scheme owes its emergence as its present shape and appearance mainly to the last ruler of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, King Stanisław August Poniatowski. In the mid-16th century, it became part of the estates of Poland's Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza, who built a wooden manor house with an Italian garden on this site. Later, the wooden manor house of Queen Anna Jagiellon stood on this spot, immortalized in 1578 by the performance of the first Polish play, Dismissal of the Greek Envoys by Jan Kochanowski. To the south, King Sigismund III Vasa had a four-sided stone castle with corner towers erected in 1624.
In the second half of the 17th century, Ujazdów became the property of Grand Crown Marshal Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski. He was the first to call attention to the thickly wooded area of a former animal park stretching along the foot of Ujazdów Castle where he built two garden pavilions. The first pavilion was a hermitage and the other originally contained an ornate bath chamber which first gave its name to the building and eventually to the entire garden. The original baths designed by the renowned architect Tylman van Gameren in the Baroque style, are contained to this day within the walls of the Palace on the Isle. In the first half of the 18th century, Ujazdów was leased to King Augustus II the Strong, during whose reign a regular waterway known as the Piaseczno Canal was built.
In 1764, Ujazdów became the property of King Stanisław II Augustus. The monarch first set about rebuilding Ujazdów Castle which he chose as his summer residence. Work was begun in the castle's forefield, where a series of straight paths converging at circles was laid out. The remodelling of the old Ujazdów Castle, which received an additional storey and new wings, dragged on without producing the expected results. The king became discouraged, abandoned further work and shifted his attention to the surrounding gardens.
File:Bellotto View of Ujazdów.jpg|thumb|left|250px|View of the park and Ujazdów Castle from the surrounding countryside. The baths were initially established in a rural country forest. Painting by Bernardo Bellotto, 1776
Modified and reconstructed in several stages over two decades beginning in 1772, the former Lubomirski Bath-House was eventually transformed into the elegant classicist Palace on the Isle. Throughout the gardens, many new structures were built and adorned by architects Dominik Merlini and Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer, painters Jan Bogumił Plersch and Marcello Bacciarelli, and sculptors Andrzej Le Brun, Jakub Monaldi, and Franciszek Pinek. In 1774 a White House was erected in the form of a simple hexagon with comfortably appointed interiors. According to legend, the king's mistress, Elżbieta Grabowska, as well as his sisters resided in the manor. From 1775 to 1783 the Myślewicki Palace was built opposite the Bath-House. Originally it took the form of a cube built on a square, to which eventually wings were built on and subsequently elevated. During the 1770s the hermitage, which had been damaged by lightning, was restored and one of the king's companions, Teresa Lhullier, took up residence there.
File:Bacciarelli Stanislaus Augustus in a feathered hat.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Stanisław II Augustus transformed the baths into a renowned park with palaces and temples. Painting by Bacciarelli.
Gradually, the gardens also changed their appearance. In 1778, a Royal Promenade was laid out – a lane joining the White House to the Bath-House. At the point where it crossed the Wilanów Road, a one-storey Chinese-style summer house was erected. The old canals and pool near the Bath House were transformed into diversely shaped ponds of considerable size. In addition to gardens geometrically laid out in the French manner, the park also contained scenic areas inspired by the romantic English garden. Near the Royal Promenade a small pavilion meant for then a popular game called Trou Madame was built, later converted into a theatre. Directly opposite, on the southern shore of the pond, an earthen amphitheatre with a stage in a cluster of trees was established. The view from the Bath House to the south was closed off with a water cascade and to the north – with a stone bridge upon which a monument to King John III Sobieski stands to this day. The Grand Annexe of considerable size contained the extensive premises of the royal kitchen as well as lodgings for officials and servants quarters. Exotic fruit was grown in the Old Orangery, which was frequently visited by guests.
By then, the royal complex also included the baroque Belvedere Palace situated at the southern edge of the escarpment. In one of the wings, the king set up a faience factory whose products were known as Belvedere vessels. Whenever Stanisław Augustus visited Łazienki, he was followed by his entire court and closest family members. Decorative tents were set up in the garden to accommodate mainly all the servants and guards. At such times, the park was filled with strolling couples, people in carriages and small boats or gondolas. Colourful and raucous spectacles including firework displays and other illuminations were staged in the gardens and often attended by the citizens of Warsaw. Such was the case when a magnificent carousel was set into motion to mark the unveiling of the King John III Sobieski monument in 1788.
The Palace on the Isle was the scene of the famous Thursday Lunches, to which the king would invite scholars, writers and poets. Łazienki at that time was an important cultural centre that flourished thanks to the support of Stanislaus Augustus, a patron of the fine arts and propagator of science and learning. As a palace and garden complex, Łazienki reflected the classicist style widespread in Europe during the latter half of the 18th century. But it stood for its picturesque nature and variety, hence that classicism has come to be known as the style of Stanislaus Augustus.
Following the partitions of Poland, in the 19th century, Łazienki fell into the hands of the Russian tsars. In the period from 1819 to 1830, at the request of the new owners architect Jakub Kubicki rebuilt the Belvedere in the late-classicist style and subsequently erected new pavilions in the gardens – the Egyptian Temple and Temple of Diana. He converted the former Trou Madame pavilion into a new guardhouse and a school, hence today it is best known as Podchorążówka.
The Nazi occupation was a tragic period for Łazienki. In 1939 it was closed to Poles and the historic buildings were taken over by the German military. Towards the end of December 1944, before evacuating the palace, the Nazis drenched its walls with petrol and set the complex on fire. In the building's blackened walls they drilled some one thousand holes to place the dynamite in order to blow it up the way they had Warsaw's Royal Castle but ultimately they were unable to do so.
Following the Second World War, an arduous reconstruction project of the Łazienki royal complex, which was to last nearly two decades, got underway. The first seven ground floor chambers of the palace was opened to the public in 1960 and in 1965 the entire first floor. Fortunately, the White House, Myślewicki Palace and the theatre in the old orangery were spared from any severe destruction during the war. Nevertheless, they required thorough restoration, since they did sustain damage. At present they are completely renovated and open to visitors. Also restored are the Amphitheatre, Waterworks and the Cadets’ Hall which recently became the home of the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Museum. This historic palace and garden complex, now situated in the city centre, performs various cultural functions and is regularly visited by a great many domestic and foreign excursions as well as Varsovians.
Structures in the park
Palace on the Isle
The principal edifice of Łazienki is the Palace on the Isle. It was originally a baroque Bath-House erected in about 1680 by Lubomirski according to the design of Tylman van Gameren, the most outstanding architect in Poland at that time. The square-shaped structure had a three-side protrusion on its northern elevation. Inside was a round hall with a fountain and the hall was topped by a cupola illuminated from above by lanterns. The walls were studded with pebbles, seashells and imitated grotto. Adjoining it was a bath chamber with walls adorned by bas-reliefs. Both the building's interior as well as its exterior elevation were richly decorated with stucco, sculptures and murals. A portion of the original decorations survived on the entrance wall of the columned portico. Also original is the Latin inscription to be read as a rebus. In translation, it states: "This house hates sorrow, loves peace, offers a bath, recommends an idyllic life and wishes to play host to honest men."To a large extent, the decorations of the main entrance hall, the Chamber of Bacchus and the Bath-Chamber all dating from Lubomirski's time, have survived. Stanislaus Augustus first took an interest in the old Bath-House in 1772. Initially, some of the interiors were restored and turned into living quarters. That coincided with a fashionable notion of fleeing palatial mansions to secludes rural abodes. In 1777, the first considerable change in the Bath-House's appearance occurred. Most notably a send storey was added to the building with a sleeping suite for King Stanislaus Augustus. Downstairs a dining-room was created which already had a classicist appearance. Fashionable roofed Chinese galleries with little bridges were added at both sides, with the western one leading to what soon would be the Royal Promenade. In 1784, a more extensive reconstruction of the Bath-House was launched according to a design by Dominik Merlini. Two new annexes were built on the southern side, joined by a row of four columns. The classicist façade was covered with sandstone slabs. Four years later two new segments slightly set back from the south were added on both sides. On the northern side, they formed part of the new, monumental northern façade which featured a columned portico crowned by a triangular tympanum. The entire elevation was crowned with a stone attic embellished with sculptures by André-Jean Lebrun.
In 1793, two additional pavilions were constructed. They were joined to the palace by little bridges with columned galleries. Despite the numerous reconstructions over the years, the edifice had remained as a harmonious whole. But what started as a simple bathing pavilion had been transformed into a lavish palace. The exterior changes were accompanied by work on the interiors, most of which were given a classicist-style appearance.
A completely new interior, in the western segment added in 1788, was the two-tiered Ballroom with decorations designed by Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer. Completed in 1793, it constituted an outstanding example of the classicist style in Poland. The stuccowork and mural decorations were subordinated to architectural divisions. The axis of the composition was set off by two monumental marble fireplaces in the form of wall porticoes, featuring statues of Apollo and Farnesian Heracles set against the shorter walls. The longer, white marbled walls decorated by vertical panneaux, painted by Jan Bogumił Plersh in the style of Raphael's grotesques in the Vatican. Gold was the dominant colour in all chambers, especially in Solomon's Hall. The plafond, bed-mouldings and both longer walls were filled with paintings by Marcello Bacciarelli illustrating the life of King Solomon. It was also during the time that the interior of the former baroque grotto at the centre of the building was changed into something exceptionally monumental and serious. The walls were stuccoed in gold, grey and white and were divided with half-columns as well as four niches containing the marble statues of the greatest Polish monarchs: Casimir III the Great, Stefan Batory, Sigismund III and John III Sobieski. The cupola contained four tondi painted by Bacciarelli symbolizing the four virtues exemplified by the monarchs: courage, wisdom, justice and mercy. They concealed earlier frescos by Plersch illustrating the times of the day which had been in keeping with the interior's previous climate.
Among the other ground-floor chambers is also the portrait room and the considerably bigger picture gallery with paintings collected over time by kings and queens. A small chapel was also erected on the ground floor. It was topped with an oval cupola and the walls were divided by pilasters and panels covered with multi-coloured stucco. The first floor consists of a suite and study, the picture gallery, a royal bedroom, library and the quarters of some servants.