See Wilanow's splendor, both the treasures and the leaves
Other women? Men? In wigs? Jan Sobieski cigarettes? Warm chamber pots? - and what could we do but follow? Once we gathered in the next room he continued, "but he was also a lover of fine art and literature."
Groan. The big letdown. But it's hard to be let down when you've horned in on an English-language tour of the Wilanow Palace for free. Plus, it's hard to be disappointed once you've finished and are lounging in the gardens on an autumn afternoon more properly placed in summer.
King Jan Sobieski III purchased the village of Milanowo in 1677 so he could escape the racket of the Royal Castle and Old Town, and built a baroque-style palace for his country residence. He renamed the village Villa Nouva, which later morphed into Wilanow. Over the years, subsequent owners and tenants added onto the u-shaped palace until the Nazis plundered it during World War II, absconding with many of its riches, trashing the rest. After the war, the palace became state property and was renovated.
A turn around the palace, its grounds and the neighboring Poster Museum (Muzeum Plakatu) is a great way to spend a Saturday or Sunday, especially now as the leaves have entered their brilliant death throes.
In order to see the palace innards, you have three options:
• You can go bez guide for zl. 9.50 (Purchase your ticket at the little booth by the entrance) and get a reasonable idea of the riches and their significance from placards - in Polish, French, Russian and English - in each room.
• You can pay for a guide. A proper tour of the palace can take up to three hours and cost anywhere from zl. 14-zl. 140, depending on whether you're in a group or alone. Most tours have to be booked ahead of time. The guide provides more details than the placards as well as background, anecdotes, historical perspective, laughs.
For example, while in the Grand Crimson Chamber in the north wing of the palace, a guide pointed out Nicolo Vivani Codazzi's "The Entry of John III's Ambassador Michal Kazimierz Radziwill to Rome's Piazza del Popolo on 4 August 1680" and said that it was originally titled "Man on Horseback," but the title was found to lack the baroque spirit so it was renamed.
(Actually, the guide said that the horse had golden horseshoes. But see what I mean? Insight. Details.)
• You can be a parasite. Pay your zl. 9.50 for the entrance and latch onto the first tour group that overtakes you, or which you overtake.
The first thing you notice on your tour are those little plastic bread bags you have to wear over your shoes. They make you want to drag your feet, sliding along in a harsh whisper. The only other sound is foreign tongues strangling and choking on Polish names.
The beginning is in the basement and contains a history of the palace. Then it's up and around several flights of stairs into the gallery of Polish portraits from the 16th to 19th centuries, and other sculptures, military stuff, old uncomfortable furniture, medallions, artifacts.
The portraits illustrate some of the fashion blunders of the times. I don't know which is worse - the ridiculous wigs or the haircuts that look like bad toupees, as if the bowl had been placed over the back of the subject's head as his head was shaved.
Some of the interesting sights on the first floor include the Faience Room where a fat little leg of one of the subjects in a ceiling painting dangles three-dimensionally from the ceiling; the Quiet Room (Pokoj Cichy) with 17th- and 18th-century frescoes that were discovered beneath 19th-century Chinese-style wall paintings (The first of several such "discoveries" throughout the palace. It compels you to take a hammer to the plaster walls of your apartment in search of hidden frescoes or rooms.); a bronze bust of Napoleon; and marble busts of Fryderyk Chopin and Adam Mickiewicz.
"A great Polish poet," a museum worker told me as I contemplated
Mickiewicz. I asked her if they were replicas. "Here, all is original," she said.
It was then I heard English being spoken. I bided my time in front of the busts until the tour group - a bunch of Canadians - caught up and engulfed me, then I moved along in their wake listening in as we descended to the ground floor and the north wing.
The rooms on the ground floor are much more ornate. You feel that you could go through the palace every day and see something in each room that you hadn't seen before. The tour goes north to south, from the crimson rooms to the queen's chambers, the great vestibule, the king's chambers, the white hall to the end.
Stuffed with splendor you might be tempted to head back into the city.
Don't. There's plenty left to see.
Across the courtyard is the entrance to the palace gardens, a peaceful, beautiful diversion, and the Orangery (Oranleria), which houses decorative art from the 17th to the 19th centuries as well as art exhibits. (Currently, an exhibit of tapestry art by Dorota Dragan-Bojarska runs until Oct. 20.)
On the south wing of the palace is the entrance to the former Palace Kitchen (Kuchnia Palacowa), which displays temporary exhibits. Outside the palace grounds to the left is the Poster Museum, an apt establishment for a country known for its impressive poster art. Currently, posters, drawings and paintings by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the ones responsible for wrapping Berlin's Reichstag a couple of years ago, will be on display until the end of the month as part of the exhibit at the National Museum.
If you go…
(Note: Except for the Poster Museum, each place is open every day except Tuesdays. Admission is free on Thursdays.)
• Wilanow Palace (Palac w Wilanowie), ul. S.K. Potockiego 10/16, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; admission and a guided tour in Polish, zl. 9.50; admission and guided tour in English, French, German, Russian, Italian or Spanish, zl. 140 for a group of up to 10 people, zl. 14 per person for groups of 11-35 people.
• Palace Kitchen, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Sunday; zl. 3.
• Park/garden, 9:30 a.m.-dusk, zl. 2.
• Orangery, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
• The Poster Museum, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; Wednesdays free; zl. 6.
To get there…
Head south on ulica Sobieskiego until it turns into ulica Wilanowska and take that to the stoplight. Go straight at the stoplight. You can't miss it. By bus, take the E2, 116, 165, 130, 180, 410, 519, 522, 710 to the Wilanow stop.
Groan. The big letdown. But it's hard to be let down when you've horned in on an English-language tour of the Wilanow Palace for free. Plus, it's hard to be disappointed once you've finished and are lounging in the gardens on an autumn afternoon more properly placed in summer.
King Jan Sobieski III purchased the village of Milanowo in 1677 so he could escape the racket of the Royal Castle and Old Town, and built a baroque-style palace for his country residence. He renamed the village Villa Nouva, which later morphed into Wilanow. Over the years, subsequent owners and tenants added onto the u-shaped palace until the Nazis plundered it during World War II, absconding with many of its riches, trashing the rest. After the war, the palace became state property and was renovated.
A turn around the palace, its grounds and the neighboring Poster Museum (Muzeum Plakatu) is a great way to spend a Saturday or Sunday, especially now as the leaves have entered their brilliant death throes.
In order to see the palace innards, you have three options:
• You can go bez guide for zl. 9.50 (Purchase your ticket at the little booth by the entrance) and get a reasonable idea of the riches and their significance from placards - in Polish, French, Russian and English - in each room.
• You can pay for a guide. A proper tour of the palace can take up to three hours and cost anywhere from zl. 14-zl. 140, depending on whether you're in a group or alone. Most tours have to be booked ahead of time. The guide provides more details than the placards as well as background, anecdotes, historical perspective, laughs.
For example, while in the Grand Crimson Chamber in the north wing of the palace, a guide pointed out Nicolo Vivani Codazzi's "The Entry of John III's Ambassador Michal Kazimierz Radziwill to Rome's Piazza del Popolo on 4 August 1680" and said that it was originally titled "Man on Horseback," but the title was found to lack the baroque spirit so it was renamed.
(Actually, the guide said that the horse had golden horseshoes. But see what I mean? Insight. Details.)
• You can be a parasite. Pay your zl. 9.50 for the entrance and latch onto the first tour group that overtakes you, or which you overtake.
The first thing you notice on your tour are those little plastic bread bags you have to wear over your shoes. They make you want to drag your feet, sliding along in a harsh whisper. The only other sound is foreign tongues strangling and choking on Polish names.
The beginning is in the basement and contains a history of the palace. Then it's up and around several flights of stairs into the gallery of Polish portraits from the 16th to 19th centuries, and other sculptures, military stuff, old uncomfortable furniture, medallions, artifacts.
The portraits illustrate some of the fashion blunders of the times. I don't know which is worse - the ridiculous wigs or the haircuts that look like bad toupees, as if the bowl had been placed over the back of the subject's head as his head was shaved.
Some of the interesting sights on the first floor include the Faience Room where a fat little leg of one of the subjects in a ceiling painting dangles three-dimensionally from the ceiling; the Quiet Room (Pokoj Cichy) with 17th- and 18th-century frescoes that were discovered beneath 19th-century Chinese-style wall paintings (The first of several such "discoveries" throughout the palace. It compels you to take a hammer to the plaster walls of your apartment in search of hidden frescoes or rooms.); a bronze bust of Napoleon; and marble busts of Fryderyk Chopin and Adam Mickiewicz.
"A great Polish poet," a museum worker told me as I contemplated
Mickiewicz. I asked her if they were replicas. "Here, all is original," she said.
It was then I heard English being spoken. I bided my time in front of the busts until the tour group - a bunch of Canadians - caught up and engulfed me, then I moved along in their wake listening in as we descended to the ground floor and the north wing.
The rooms on the ground floor are much more ornate. You feel that you could go through the palace every day and see something in each room that you hadn't seen before. The tour goes north to south, from the crimson rooms to the queen's chambers, the great vestibule, the king's chambers, the white hall to the end.
Stuffed with splendor you might be tempted to head back into the city.
Don't. There's plenty left to see.
Across the courtyard is the entrance to the palace gardens, a peaceful, beautiful diversion, and the Orangery (Oranleria), which houses decorative art from the 17th to the 19th centuries as well as art exhibits. (Currently, an exhibit of tapestry art by Dorota Dragan-Bojarska runs until Oct. 20.)
On the south wing of the palace is the entrance to the former Palace Kitchen (Kuchnia Palacowa), which displays temporary exhibits. Outside the palace grounds to the left is the Poster Museum, an apt establishment for a country known for its impressive poster art. Currently, posters, drawings and paintings by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the ones responsible for wrapping Berlin's Reichstag a couple of years ago, will be on display until the end of the month as part of the exhibit at the National Museum.
If you go…
(Note: Except for the Poster Museum, each place is open every day except Tuesdays. Admission is free on Thursdays.)
• Wilanow Palace (Palac w Wilanowie), ul. S.K. Potockiego 10/16, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; admission and a guided tour in Polish, zl. 9.50; admission and guided tour in English, French, German, Russian, Italian or Spanish, zl. 140 for a group of up to 10 people, zl. 14 per person for groups of 11-35 people.
• Palace Kitchen, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Sunday; zl. 3.
• Park/garden, 9:30 a.m.-dusk, zl. 2.
• Orangery, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
• The Poster Museum, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; Wednesdays free; zl. 6.
To get there…
Head south on ulica Sobieskiego until it turns into ulica Wilanowska and take that to the stoplight. Go straight at the stoplight. You can't miss it. By bus, take the E2, 116, 165, 130, 180, 410, 519, 522, 710 to the Wilanow stop.
