WARSAW, Poland—In 1764, King Stanislaw August Poniatowski bought a baroque bathhouse pavilion along with a surrounding estate to build his summer retreat, in Warsaw.

Dutch architect Tylman van Gamerenhad had designed the original bathhouse.  The king had the bathhouse extended to make his neoclassical style summer retreat, the Royal Lazienki Palace, more commonly known as The Palace on the Isle. Some of the original bathhouse decor remains inside the palace.  

The Palace on the Isle sits on around 180 acres that includes several neoclassical buildings and vast English-style gardens. Court architects Domenico Merlini  (Lake Como, Italy) and J ohann Christian Kammsetzer (Dresden, Saxony) took their inspiration for the palace from various eras of Italian architecture, including the mannerist style of Villa Medici, the baroque style of Villa Ludovisi, and the neoclassical style of Villa Albani. 

The vast gardens reflect the king’s love of the English gardens that he’d seen on his Grand Tour, in particular the Stowe Gardens in southeast England, designed by the eminent head gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown.

Among the estate’s notable neoclassical buildings a re the Myslewicki Palace, the Old Orangery (which contains the Royal Sculpture Gallery, and the Royal Court Theater, home of the Polish Royal Opera, and one of the few surviving 18th-century court theaters); the White Pavilion, the dining room of which contains the first Polish grotesques (murals of flora, fauna, and fantastical creatures).

The king was an avid art collector, a hobby he’d picked in the Netherlands after he was inspired by the work of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. The art and architecture throughout the king’s buildings promotes religious and moral values and the Republic of Poland.