The Palace
Laid out in a horseshoe plan with a central core flanked by a pair of projecting wings, the classical grandeur of the facade , complete with Corinthian columns, Roman statuary above the pavilions and intermingled Latin inscriptions, reflects Sobieski's original conception. The centrepiece of the main facade - a golden sun with rays reflecting from decorated shields bearing the Sobieski coat of arms - clarifies the essential idea of the palace: the glorification of Sobieski himself. Despite extensive wartime damage, the essentials of the interior design have remained largely unchanged. Among the sixty or so rooms of Wilanow's interior you'll find styles ranging from the lavish early Baroque of the apartments of Jan Sobieski and John III, to the classical grace of the nineteenth-century Potocki museum rooms. Some might find the cumulative effect of all this pomp and glory rather deadening - even the official guides seem to recognize this, easing off with the facts and figures in the last part of the guided tour. Several flights of stairs lead to the portrait galleries . After the opening set of rooms, which are among the oldest, outlining the history of the palace, the galleries contain a number of casket images, intended to be interred with the subject, but sometimes removed from the coffin before burial. They are part of a total collection of over 250 portraits, most of which are hung in long corridor galleries - an intriguing introduction to the development of Polish Sarmatian fashion, with its peculiar synthesis of Western haute couture and Eastern influences such as shaved heads and wide sashes. If you've already visited other museums, the portrait of Jan Sobieski in the Sobieski Family Room will probably look familiar - the portly military hero most often crops up charging Lone Ranger-like towards a smouldering Vienna, trampling a few Turks on the way. Here as in the later galleries, the presence of portraits of the (aristocratic) great and good of Polish history provides the opportunity for the impromptu history lessons administered to local tour groups by the guides - naturally enough with an emphasis on insurgents, uncompromising oppositionists and other heroes of the struggle for independence over the centuries. One of the undoubted highlights of the collection is the great masterpiece of Neoclassical portraiture, Stanislaw Kostka Potocki on Horseback by Jacques-Louis David. After Sobieski's Library , with its beautiful marble-tiled floor and allegorical ceiling paintings, you come to the Faience Room , clad in blue with white Delft tiles and topped by an elegant copper-domed cupola surrounded by delicate period stucco mouldings, the centrepiece an eagle raising aloft the ubiquitous Sobieski coat of arms. The August Locci Room , named after Sobieski's chief architect, who designed most of the early interiors is one of several where the fine original seventeenth-century wooden beams have been uncovered. Many of the rooms on this floor offer excellent views over the palace gardens. The Painted Cabinet Room , next door, features recently uncovered eighteenth-century frescoes, notably a turbaned black man carrying a parrot in a cage. In contrast, restoration work in the Quiet Room has uncovered seventeenth-century frescoes of preening Greek goddesses. Next comes another series of long portrait galleries , mostly from the Enlightenment era, including Kosciuszko, the architects of the Third May Constitution, and a benign looking Stanislaw Poniatowski, Poland's last king, and family. Another flight of stairs takes you up into the nineteenth-century portrait galleries, much used by the guides-cum-teachers with tour groups, with a suitably demure Maria Walewska, Napoleon's mistress, next to a bust of the general himself. Downstairs again brings you to the other main set of apartment rooms. First comes the grand Great Crimson Room , as colourful as its name suggests, replete with a fabulously ornate ceiling filled with decorative cherubs and medallions and lashings of period art and furniture, including a massive dining table big enough to seat at least fifty people. Continuing on, you pass through the Etruscan Study , filled with third- and fourth-century BC vases from the Naples region, collected by nineteenth-century palace owner Stanislaw Potocki during his regular architectural excursions. The Lower North Gallery further on links the two wings to the main building. Converted into a mini-museum of antiquities by Potocki in the 1820s to show off his archeological finds, it's now been restored to its original early-eighteenth-century state, murals included, though the classical sculptures have remained. The end of the gallery brings you into the Queen's Apartments originally used by Maria Kazimierza, Sobieski's wife, the most impressive of which are the Antechamber , containing two cabinets of fine late-seventeenth-century porcelain, an inevitably sumptuous bedchamber, and the Great Vestibule , a three-storeyed affair of marble pillars and classicist mouldings connecting the royal apartments. The King's Bedchamber sports a great four-poster bed surrounded by period military trappings - precisely the kind of things the indefatigably warfaring Sobieski probably dreamed about. Past the Chapel , a simple shrine built by Potocki to commemorate his royal predecessor, you pass through further galleries containing more of Potocki's collection of classical sculpture, including some Roman sarcophagi, and a prize plaster Sobieski Monument of the corpulent king striking his customary pose charging a horse over the hapless Turks on his way to lifting the Siege of Vienna. Last, but by no means least, comes the Grand Hall of August II , also known as the White Hall . Designed in the 1730s for King August II and thoroughly renovated after 1945, the mirrors on the walls combine to create a feeling of immense space. Box galleries, with balconies for the royal musicians, stand above the fireplaces at both ends, though the hall is more often used for piano recitals these days.
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