Potocki Palace (Natolin)

Potocki Palace
	Main facade
Creation time :	1660
Castle type :	Palace
Conservation status:	Reconstructed
Place:	Warsaw
Geographical location	52 ° 8 '25.8 " N , 21 ° 4' 24.9" E Coordinates: 52 ° 8 '25.8 " N , 21 ° 4' 24.9" E

The east side facing the Vistula ...

... is already on a high terrace on the sloping Vistula embankment

View of the east side of the palace from the former park, painting by Christian Breslauer from 1852 (Widok pałacu w Natolinie)

The small Potocki Palace in Natolin (also known as the Natolin Palace or Palais ) only got its name at the beginning of the 19th century. Before he was known as Bażantarnia (German: Fasanerie ). The property, which is located in a small landscaped park and to which a 1.2 square kilometer large, wooded nature reserve is attached, belonged to the estate district of the castle in Wilanów . Today it belongs to the Polish state and is used as part of the College of Europe campus .

location

The palace is located around 10 kilometers south of downtown Warsaw on the western embankment of the Vistula . About 75 meters west of the palace is the park boundary on the old and now rarely used Ulica Nowoursynowska . The modern, four-lane Ulica Rosoła , one of two important arteries in Warsaw's Ursynów district, runs another 75 meters further west . From the east the access road Ulica Pałacowa - starting from Ulica Przyczólkowa - runs about 1200 meters straight towards the palace, where it divides because of a pond in front of the palace. The castle in Wilanów is around 3.5 kilometers away.

history

Originally there was a breeding enclosure for hunting pheasants owned by King Jan Sobieski . The then name "Bażanteria" should keep the complex until the beginning of the 19th century. In the first half of the 18th century, several avenues were created in the damp forest at the foot of the embankment, which converged on a ledge of the embankment. In addition, a canal with a drainage ditch was built running across the embankment. From 1780 to 1782 Prince was August Aleksander Czartoryski by Szymon Bogumił train on the said embankment lead a small, neo-classical building palace. After Czartoryski's death, his daughter and heir of the Wilanów estate, Izabella Lubomirska, continued the construction work, which was completed around 1784.

Since 1787 the daughter of Lubomirska, Aleksandra, and her husband, Stanisław Kostka Potocki, were allowed to use the palace. After the Wilanów estate fell to the couple as part of the inheritance, Potocki concentrated on redesigning the Wilanów palace complex. After the marriage of his son Aleksander to Anna Tyszkiewicz on May 27, 1805, the young couple received the "Bażanteria" property as a summer residence. In honor of the birth of the daughter Natalia Potocka in 1807, the property was renamed "Natolin". A plaque on the palace driveway commemorates the name change. From 1806 the palace and its surroundings were rebuilt. From 1810 to 1812 the palace was given a brick terrace on the embankment on its east side, at the same time construction work began on a Gothic- Classicist Dutch factory in the lower part of the park. In the following years more buildings were built. From 1807 to 1808 Chrystian Piotr Aigner worked on the interior of the palace. He later designed the so-called amphitheater as well as the enclosure and vases on the terrace. Wergiliusz Bauman replaced previous wall paintings in the palace with stucco in 1807 and 1808 . The surrounding forest became an English landscape park.

After the divorce from his wife in 1820, the palace fell to Aleksander Potocki, and his wife received the Szuster Palace . In the years 1834 to 1838 there were a number of other construction works on the palace as well as in the park. The former living area of Anna Potocka now acquired an Etruscan character. At the time, the palace was a center of social life. In 1858, the Russian Tsar Alexander II and Hieronymus Bonaparte took part in a hunt organized here. In the second half of the 19th century the property was no longer maintained and gradually fell into disrepair under the Potockis and subsequently the Branickis , who had taken over the Wilanów estate - and with it the Natolin Palace. The dilapidated Dutch factory was demolished after the First World War .

War and Post War

During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and in the months that followed, the palace was largely destroyed by German troops billeted here. After the expropriation, the Warsaw National Museum took over the facility in 1945 and rebuilt the building. The palace was subsequently closed to the public and used for representative meetings of the political elite. It was also used as the weekend residence of the Polish President. In the 1950s, reactionary members of the PZPR leadership met in the palace to discuss undesirable political changes; this group was therefore named after the meeting place Natolin. After Bolesław Bierut's death , the facility fell to the Council of Ministers.

Since 1992, the complex has been managed by the Foundation Europacenter Natolin (Fundacja Centrum Europejskie Natolin) on behalf of the Polish State Treasury . The College of Europe has been operating here since 1993 as a branch of the headquarters in Bruges . In addition to the adaptation of the historical building fabric, some new functional buildings were built in the upper part of the complex. The former landscape park is today largely forest and part of the nature reserve created here.

architecture

The palace is two-storey and originally stood on a rectangular plan in an H-shape in a uniform composition. Presumably it had a continuous flat roof. The renovation from 1806 led to a major change on the east side of the park. Here, between the two former risalits, an open hall, semicircular towards the Vistula, was installed and covered with a dome roof. The open colonnade of this hall consists of six Ionic columns and is surrounded by an equally semicircular staircase. The terrace on the slope rests on closed arcades , behind which there are storage rooms.

Indoor

In addition to the open, two-story hall and the Etruscan rooms, the building also has a handsome mosaic cabinet and a dining room. Both are designed with a lot of stucco in the style of mature classicism. The wall paintings by Vinzenzo Brenna that originally existed here were destroyed during the renovation at the beginning of the 19th century. The vestibule has a Doric frieze decoration all around .

Niche with bust of Brutus in the “drawing room”
The mosaic cabinet on the ground floor
The dining room

Palace ensemble building

The former (palatial) rear building to the south belongs to the palace, which was probably built between 1806 and 1808 based on a design by Stanisław Kostka Potocki. The classical car remise and the ajar stable emerged 1808/1809. The guard house at the entrance to Wolica (today: Ursynów) was built in 1823 by Chrystian Piotr Aigner.

The rear building of the palace, which is now the foundation of the Natolin European Center hosts
The former horse stables in which the library is located today
Seminar rooms in the former coach house
The gate guard in the Upper Park (Ursynów)

Other objects in the park

There are other historical objects in the park. This includes a Doric temple that Henryk Marconi created in 1834. The Mauritanian Gate , the Mauritanian Bridge and the Aqueduct (all 1834 to 1838) also come from him . The monument to Natalia Sanguszko was also erected around 1834 to 1838, the sculpture was made by Ludwig Kauffmann, the ensemble design by Marconi. The forester's house was built at the beginning of the 19th century and rebuilt in 1838. The gate system from the direction of Wilanów probably also originated from Chrystian Piotr Aigner .