The Łazienki (Bath) Park and Palace complex lies in Warsaw’s central district on an avenue that is part of the “Royal Route”, linking the Royal Castle with Wilanow Palace to the south.  Its Warsaw’s largest park, occupying over 76 hectares of the city centre. 

From 1674 the property belonged to Count Stanislaw Lubomirski, (note  coat of arms without a cross!) , who built a Baroque bathhouse and richly decorated it with stuccos, statues, and paintings; some of the original decorations and architectural details survive.

In 1766 King Stanislaw Poniatowski purchased the estate and converted the bathing pavilion into a classicist summer residence, with pavilions, an amphitheatre for concerts; villas and monuments. The Palace was the scene  of the famous “Thursday dinners”, to which the King would invite scholars, writers and poets – Lazienki at that time was an important and flourishing cultural centre.

The Solomon Room is my favourite part of the Palace, amazing murals. Unfortunately a series of paintings that used to here, by Marcello Bacciarelli depicting the history of Solomon – with King Stanislaw as the biblical king :), were torched by the Germans in 1944.

In the 19thC, following the partitions of Poland, it fell into the hands of the Russian tsars, who erected new pavilions in the gardens. In 1918, it was officially designated as a public park.

During WW2, the occupying Germans drenched its walls with petrol and set the comlex on fire. They also drilled holes in the palace walls in preparation for blowing it up. They never got around to carrying out the planned destruction. Following WW2, an arduous reconstruction project of the complex commenced which lasted 2 decades.