The building, designed by a group of eminent architects, represents a few architectural styles. It evidences the buildings that were created in a sentimental landscape complex which was included in the city area at a later time.

History

The palace of duchess and wife of marshal, Izabela Lubomirska nee Czartoryska, in Mokotów was created in line with a design by Efraim Schroeger. It represented, as one of the first such buildings in Poland, a suburban villa type. It is assumed that it was built on the foundations of the seat of royal secretary Jerzy Burbach from the 17th century, where Shuysky tsars stayed. The palace, built on a square floor plan, is located at the edge of the Warsaw Escarpment. The building is Classicist, two-storeyed, with five-axial façades with avant-corps, covered with a tented roof. It can be accessed from the north by an elevated, semi-circular porte-cochère containing a cave - bathroom with trompe l’œil decor. The eastern façade was diversified by a terrace resting on three arcades, framed by two flights of stairs, offering a view of the Vistula valley. From the south, the building was adjoined by a small terrace with a pergola, and from the west - by stairs. Initially, the villa was located in the regular garden with a manor house which had been also designed by Schroeger. Since approx. 1773, also Szymon Bogumił Zug had worked for the well-educated founder. He transformed the extended garden complex and designed many park pavilions. He converted the palace, providing the eastern façade with a new shape with an asymmetrical narrow avant-corps and a terrace resting on only one arcade. At the south-western corner of the palace, he added a single-floor pavilion, the so-called Burgrave House. In that way, the building was no longer symmetrical. The architect provided it with Romantic architecture properties. In 1799, the estate became property of the founder’s daughter Aleksandra, wife of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, and later their son Aleksander. In 1820, after divorcing Aleksander, Anna nee Tyszkiewicz became the owner of the estate. As an advocate of neo-Gothic style, she ordered, in the years 1824-27, the conversion of the estate to Henryk Marconi. At that time, western and northern façades of the palace, as well as part of the interior, were transformed in this style. From approx. 1840 Anna, bearing the surname of her second husband, Dunin-Wąsowicz, leased apartments in the residence to summer visitors, and in 1845, she sold the estate to a renown lithographer, Franciszek Karol Szuster. At his request, after 1852, Adam Idźkowski built up the southern terrace and added a tower from the east. In 1865, from the south, he erected a neo-Renaissance, two-storeyed outbuilding. At the same time and in the same style, the Burgrave House was also converted. The Palace was damaged during the September campaign in 1939, and in 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, it was burned down. In the years 1962-65, it was rebuilt with the use of the external walls according to a design by Jerzy Brabander. It was to serve as the seat of the Warsaw Music Society.

Description

The palace is located in the Promenada-Morskie Oko Park, on the main axis of the park path perpendicular to Puławska Street. It is situated on the edge of the Warsaw Escarpment and offers a panoramic view of the greenery below. Its diversified body has been embedded in the slope in a picturesque way, which translates into the number of storeys in individual façades. From the south-west, the palace is connected by a semi-circular wall with the Burgrave House, and the northern façade can be accessed by a horseshoe-shaped porte-cochère on a bricked up earthen structure. The brick building is built on an irregular floor plan resulting from the gradual extension of the original building erected on a square floor plan. All façades feature asymmetric, higher avant-corps over the entrances. The main part of the building is covered with a hip roof clad in roof tiles, diversified with numerous dormers. The western façade, preceded by the stairs and the terrace, and the northern one, with the porte-cochère, are two-storeyed, with preserved neo-Gothic décor which comprises a variety of decorative motifs reminiscent of the Gothic architecture: e.g. trefoil in the arcaded frieze, battlements topping the façades, rosette in the gable of the northern façade, decorative pinnacles, brick bond, and first of all the pointed arch of the sandstone portals, blind windows, window openings, or their surrounds. The eastern façade in the northern part features décor from the time in which the stage of conversion designed by Zug was carried out. It is preceded by a terrace resting on a wide arch of the arcade, with stairs on the background of a three-storey avant-corps. Above the terrace, there is a Palladian window which is worth particular attention - it is a large window with a semicircular top section, framed by two rectangular smaller windows - in this case, it is interestingly decorated with corbels with heads of bearded old men. To the south from the avant-corps, there is an octagonal tower added in mid-19th century and a neo-Renaissance wing partitioned with pilasters and profiled cornices, with arcaded windows on the ground floor and niches on the axis. This outbuilding frames from the east the three-storey northern façade, preceded by a low terrace. Its decoration is mostly comprised of windows and blind windows: on the ground floor shaped as Romanesque paired windows, and on the first floor - with round arches. Inside, the historicist décor of the Museum Room and the Library has been restored.

The monument is accessible.

compiled by Małgorzata Laskowska-Adamowicz, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Warszawa, 05-10-2015.

Bibliography

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