The area around Lazienki Park in Warsaw includes parks, palaces, and other historic buildings, museums, and government departments. Extending south from Three Crosses (Trzech Krzyzy) Square, the main thoroughfare is Ujazdowskie Avenue, along which the former residences of Polish aristocrats and the city’s wealthy merchant families are.

Besides several government departments, the two chambers of the Polish Parliament occupy a large complex on the adjacent Wiejska Street. At the far end of Ujazdowskie Avenue is Belwedere Palace, until 1994 the residency of Poland’s president.

Lazienki Park

Some foreign legations are on this avenue as well. But Lazienki Park is the most popular attraction. This romantic, landscaped park includes the Palace on the Water, together with various other palaces, pavilions, an amphitheater, and two orangery’s. The most known and beloved corner of the park is the Chopin Garden, with its towering bronze Chopin statue depicting the composer seated under a willow tree.

The willow’s branches stretch over his head like the fingers of a pianist over piano keys. For more than 50 years, there have been free Chopin concerts in the park every weekend during the summer months, one of Warsaw’s most popular cultural attractions.

Lazienki Park and its surroundings are a must for every visitor to Warsaw.

Established by the statesman and military leader Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, the Polish Military Museum opened in 1920. The museum has occupied its present site since 1933 and is Warsaw’s second-largest museum.  The collection manages to illustrate the history and development of Polish weapons, firearms, and amour over the last thousand years, particularly from the early Middle Ages to the 18th century.

This includes full tournament armor and a rare gilded helmet, which belonged to a Polish chieftain in the early Christian era (Poland became a Christian country in 966).

The hussars’ armor collection is unique in Europe, and there is also a fine life-size mounted figure of a hussar on display. During the 17th century, Polish hussars were widely acknowledged as being the finest heavy cavalry in Europe, and their greatest victory was at Vienna in 1683 when their charge broke the mighty Turkish army.

During that battle, a splendid Turkish officer’s tent was part of the booty taken by the hussars. Weapons, tanks, and many airplanes from World War II are on display seen in the museum’s park.

Ujazdowski Castle, which now houses the Modern Arts Center, was built at the beginning of the 17th century for King Zygmunt III Waza and his son Wladyslaw IV. The castle featured a courtyard, four towers, and decorated interiors. Its splendor was not long-lived, as Swedish soldiers looted the castle during the 1655 invasion. Between 1809 and 1944, it functioned as a military hospital.

The Communists in 1953 detonated the ruins in 1953 since it burnt out after the war. The castle was rebuilt in the 1970s and houses a major collection of works by many of the greatest 20th-century artists. The Qchnia Artystycana restaurant is also here and provides views over the Royal Canal from its windows.

The Earth Sciences Museum’s collection comprises some 150,000 exhibits, including rocks, precious stones, and fossils, while the amber collection is one of the world’s finest. Inside there is on display a marble slab stained with the blood of a soldier who died during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The museum occupies two buildings on the crest of an escarpment that descends towards the River Vistula, on the site of the former Na Gorze (“On the Hill”) Park.

The park is a design of Szymon Bogumil Zug from the 18th century. In 1935, Polish architect Bohdan Priewski built his Modernist villa on the site. He later bequeathed the villa to the museum. Priewski’s work also includes the foyer at the Grand Theater.

The Polish cabinet holds its regular meetings in the imposing Cabinet Office, on Ujazdowskie Avenue. The building, constructed in 1900, by a design by architects Wiktor Junosza Piotrowski and Henryk Gay, served as the barracks for the Suvorov Cadet School.

The Infantry Officers’ School was also housed here up until 1926, after which the building became the headquarters of the Inspector General of the Polish Armed Forces. During the interwar years, the Military Library and the Rapperswil Museum collection used one wing.

A Devestating Fire

A fire destroyed both the library and the museum collection in 1939, caused by a Nazi bombardment. Between 1984 and 1990, the Communist Party’s Academy of Social Sciences occupied a part of the building, which was commonly called “The First of May Academy”.

These days the Cabinet Office is often the scene of anti-government demonstrations. Protesting miners spread heaps of coal outside the main entrance. Similarly, farmers have followed the miners’ example by dumping, among other things, mounds of potatoes.

The design of the building of the Ministry of Education, constructed between 1925 and 1930, is notable for the striking contrast between its façade and the interiors.

The modernist façade, with its impressive Neo-Classical columns, is a design by the architect Zdzislaw Maczenski. Meanwhile, Wojciech Jastrzebowski completed the Art Deco interiors. The monumental proportions of this building must have pleased the Nazis, who used it as the Gestapo headquarters.

Poland’s parliamentary tradition started in the 15th century. The seat of the Polish Parliament (Sjem) moved from Kraków to Warsaw in 1569. Poland’s partition at the end of the 18th century interrupted the parliamentary process, which was only restored when Poland regained independence after World War I in 1918.

As there was no suitable building available at that time, parliamentary sessions for both chambers were held in the rooms of a former ladies’ finishing school.

Interior

These first rooms were then redeveloped and extended. Furthermore, there is a semi-circular hall hosing the Lower Chamber, built in 1928, designed by the architect Kazimierz Skorewicz. Jan Szczepkowski decorated this hall with Art Deco bas-reliefs. Among the various elements represented are science, justice, commerce, the air force and the merchant navy. After World War II, more parliamentary buildings emerged, designed in the then prevalent style of Socialist Realism.

Following the democratic elections in 1989 (Poland’s first since 1939), the Senate was reinstated. In 1990 a monument to the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) was unveiled outside.

Although the Belweder Palace near Lazienki Park (Palac Belweder) dates from the 17th century, it acquired a certain notoriety in 1818, when it became home of Warsaw’s Russian viceroy, Grand Duke Constantine (the loathed brother of Tsar Alexander I). The palace was refurbished and extended before the grand duke and his wife took up residence, with the grounds also laid out to offer a landscaped park.

Several romantic pavilions in Greek, Egyptian, and Gothic styles were set around a pool and canals. These grounds are now part of Lazienki Park. On 29 November 1830, the first action of the November Insurrection saw a detachment of cadet officers, together with some students, attacking Belweder Palace. But the grand duke managed to escape.

Since 1918, the state owns the palace. Marshal Jozef Pilsudski occupied it from 1926 to 1935. It was then the official residency of Poland’s president from 1945 to 1952, and again from 1989 to 1994. The beautiful Neo-Classical palace is best seen from the foot of the escarpment.

Established in 1862 as the Fine Art Museum, it became the National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe) near Lazienki Park in 1916. Tadeusz Tolwinski designed the museum’s present Modernist building. The collections include an archaeology department, medieval art, and Polish paintings.

The Military Museum (see further below) is also part of the National Museum. The museum’s vast collection started in 1862 with the first purchase of 36 paintings. Later acquisitions have since turned the museum into one of the city’s finest.

Despite losses suffered during World War II, the wide-ranging collection spans several centuries, from ancient artifacts and medieval paintings to modern works. It includes pre- and post-20th-century Polish art and archaeological finds from Faras in present-day Sudan. Due to limited space, some collections are only on display as part of special exhibitions.

Ancient Art

This gallery exhibits the discoveries of Polish archaeologists working in Egypt, Sudan, Cyprus, and the Crimea. In the Egyptian rooms, there are displays of mummies, sarcophagi, and papyri. Among the papyri, The Book of the Dead from the New Kingdom period of ancient Egyptian history is particularly interesting. Ancient Greece represents itself with pottery from various periods. There are also later Roman copies of ancient Greek sculptures. The sections devoted to Roman and Etruscan art are strong in statues, urns, and bronze artifacts.

Faras Archaeological Collection Warsaw

The Faras Collection came together in 1972 and consists of items discovered by Polish archaeologists working in Nubia (a part of present-day Sudan) during the early 1960s. Most of the finds originate from the cathedral of Faras, which was the seat of the Nubian bishops between the 7th and 14th centuries AD.

The collection includes a large number of frescoes and architectural fragments, ranging from details of carvings to entire columns and capitals. The earliest frescoes date from the 8th century, and include depictions of St Peter and St Paul in majestic poses, as well as of St Anna.

Medieval Art

Gothic paintings and sculptures form the main focus of the medieval gallery. Many of the religious artefacts are from Polish churches which no longer exist. The most important of these are altarpieces, such as St Barbara’s altar dating from 1447, and one taken from Grudziądz, created in about 1380, decorated with scenes from the lives of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

From the Church of St Elizabeth in Wrocław comes a sculpted altarpiece representing the Annunciation, from around 1480. A 16th-century triptych from Pławno illustrates the legend of St Stanislaw, believed to have been painted by the artist Hans Süss of Kulmbach. A splendid Pietà from Lubiąż dates from about 1370, and the so-called “Beautiful Madonna” from Wrocław dates from 1410.

Also from Wrocław, there’s a retable – an ornamental altar screen used for a religious painting or sculpture. Jacob Beinhart carved the one on display in about 1400. It’s decorated with a bas-relief of St Luke painting the Virgin Mary.