Waters of 18th-Century Warsaw: The Vistula, Apollo, & the Royal Łazienki Park

lazienki_krolewskie_pap.jpg, default, Palace on the Isle, Łazienki, Warsaw, photo: Mariusz Prusarczyk / PAP, center, #000000

#heritage

‘This house despises sorrow, loves peace, offers a bath, recommends living idyllically, and wishes to host good-natured guests’. This Latin word puzzle of a motto, borrowed from the 16th-century Palazzo Pretorio in the Tuscan village of Pistoia, can be seen above the main entrance to the Palace on the Isle. The extensive water system would cool down the palace walls, making the residence a perfect spot for King Poniatowski and his guests to spend the summer season.

Water from the Vistula is the healthiest

Let’s imagine – based on historical maps – that Warsaw’s ground level was about 1 metre lower in the 18th century than it is now. This means that all the natural bodies of water made up a larger part of the city’s area than they do today. For example, 250 years ago, the Vistula shoreline, which now reaches as high as the embankment on the city centre level, was located about 200 metres closer to the Warsaw Scarp. In other words, if we imagine the Vistula shoreline going from Furmańska Street through Browarna to Topiel and beyond, it will bring us closer to the world of Enlightenment-era Warsaw.

Thumbnail — Julian Cegliński’s chromolithograph depicting the Water Chamber (on the right), 1859, photo: Wikimedia Commons

The river would attract the inhabitants of the capital city, and one could make use of its benefits in various ways. Designated spots for safe swimming provided a commonly available, free opportunity for river bathing. Alternatively, one could choose to make use of Vistula baths, a spot for leisure now completely unfamiliar to us. These structures, partially submerged in water, were meant for both bathing and relaxation. One could almost say they constituted a fixed element of the riverine landscape in the Enlightenment. We know that two such baths already existed in 1728 on the level of the New Town and below the Krakowskie Przedmieście. When a new Vistula public bath was opened in 1777, Gazeta Warszawska (The Warsaw Gazette) advertised the new spot, claiming that 'a summer bath in running river water [is] beyond advantageous for ones health'. Another benefit was the fact that the owner would provide the necessary infrastructure: changing rooms and washing facilities. By the end of the 18th century, Vistula baths had proliferated, especially along the shoreline on the level of what is now Rybaka Street.

However, the inhabitants of 18th-century Warsaw did not exclusively use river water, and few of them could afford the benefits of a Vistula bath. More important in their daily lives was a functioning water system and access to a well. In 1785, there were sixteen public wells in the whole city, and in 1792 only thirteen of them were noted to function properly. The reaction to this deteriorated state of things was immediate and effective, as the number of functioning public wells had risen to twenty-five by 1796. On top of that, in the same year, there were as many as 1988 private wells, which constituted the key factor determining access to water. The local authorities did provide public wells, but in a very small number compared to the private ones.

Access to water is, of course, important, but what did the quality of water look like in 18th-century Warsaw? Christian Heinrich Erndel (1676-1734), a medical professional and botanist with ties to Dresden and Warsaw, considered the Republic’s first meteorologist, also worked on measuring the quality of water. His 1730 text, De Aquis Varsaviensibus, contains the results of research conducted in the Polish capital Erndel said:

The majority of Warsaw wells contained water from moors and standing tanks. As a result, the water was hard, with a salty taste, and contaminated by a range of impurities, with filth forming a deposit on the walls of containers or floating to the surface if boiled. Soap would dissolve with much more difficulty in water sources from Warsaw wells than in rainwater or Vistula water. (…) Various experiments have proved to us that Vistula water is the healthiest one.

According to Ch. H. Erndel, the only water that could potentially compare to Vistula one was that from the New Town area. Specifically, he claimed that '[it] bears a lot of similarities to Vistula water, which is why I would consider it the second best in Warsaw'. And what did the situation look like if we consider the reality of the court? Why did Stanisław August Poniatowski devote so much attention to water-related architectural solutions regarding Łazienki and where the water was channelled from?

Apollo & harmony

Stanisław August Poniatowski’s customary drink was spring water. The monarch would abstain from alcohol, which wasn’t always met with societal acceptance, especially among the Polish nobility. Nevertheless, owing to that, we now know that the king took care of the quality of drinking water, although his special fondness for Łazienki was likely tied to his love of landscaping rather than his enthusiasm for water itself as an element of park or garden design.

To gain a deeper understanding of the role and significance of the Royal Łazienki in the Enlightenment, its worth consulting historical maps once again. Doing so will prod our imagination and challenge our fixed ideas about space. Lets start with the fact that the Royal Łazienki was not originally built for Stanisław August Poniatowski, and that during his rule they were not even located in Warsaw.

In the preceding centuries, what is now the Łazienki area was a hunting ground for Masovian princes. It was only in the 1780s that the then-owner, Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski, commissioned two buildings to be constructed there: a hermitage, meant as a spot for solitude and relaxation, and a bathing pavilion, which could be considered a sort of Baroque spa, since:

The bath was not (…) a typical garden pavilion. Its interior boasted a central hall stylised as a grotto. There bubbled up a spring [Hippokrene] whose symbolism dated back far beyond Sarmatian Poland, to the times of Ancient Greece and to Helikon. It was a symbol of the spring that flowed from under the hooves of Pegasus and around which muses would dance, filling poets and artists with inspiration.

As time passed, however, the name Łazienki was established, rather than the originally intended name of Hippokrene. Stanisław Poniatowski acquired the estate in September 1764, two months before his coronation. The purchase was supposed to be the beginning of his private suburban residence, and it was, since Ujazdów only got incorporated into Warsaw almost thirty years later, in 1791.

Still, there is a mythological context here as well. As the symbolic god Apollo, Stanisław August Poniatowski was meant to steward the Łazienki area, which, as a harmonious spatial solution, supposedly mirrored his righteous reign and love of art in a country striving to attain the ideal socio-political state called the Golden Age. In other words, the beauty and harmony of Łazienki metaphorically pointed to how well things were going all over the Republic:

In accordance with Stanisław Augusts intention, [Łazienki] constituted an expression of a utopian vision and dream of a perfect place, where justice, peace, common happiness, simplicity, and naturalness reign supreme. These ideas were conveyed symbolically through the garden, the Palace on the Isle, and the extensive water system.

The king would stay in Łazienki from the end of May until September. The reason for this arrangement was twofold: the area comprised wetlands and was therefore really damp, and the pond surrounding the Palace on the Isle would cool down the palace walls, providing relief throughout warm months yet lowering the temperature too much during the autumn and winter season. The summer residence was where the monarch would receive both private visitors and diplomats. It was also here that, starting around the year 1770, the famous literary Thursday Dinners would take place, as well as architectural-artistic Wednesdays.

At the centre of the architectural layout of Łazienki was the Palace on the Isle, above whose entrance can be seen, up until today, a word game of a motto, borrowed from the 16th-century Palazzo Pretorio in the Tuscan village of Pistoia:

This house despises sorrow, loves peace, offers a bath, recommends living idyllically, and wishes to host good-natured guests.

What the royal circles of the Enlightenment undoubtedly valued was sensual pleasure understood as the empirical experience of that which is beautiful, tasteful, and sophisticated. However, one cannot understate the importance of striving towards the Horatian virtue of inner balance and sentimental emotionality, which introduced to the world of culture the perception of man as an integral element of nature.

The Palace on the Isle boasted a Bathroom, whose walls were decorated with little stones, shell motifs, and Dutch tiles. According to Grzegorz Piątek, what one could originally find here were

two tin bathtubs, sunk into the stone floor, filled with warm water from a boiler hidden behind the wall.

When they happened not to be in use, they were covered with wooden planks, with mattresses and cushions piled up on top. In his Big Book of Łazienki, Marek Kwiatkowski states directly that in the Enlightenment, baths that were not being used at a given moment would serve as settees.

As interiors were being designed to fit the classicist aesthetics, the project of the Łazienki Park was under development, too. The first stage of gardening work was finished around the year 1780. While the preserve, previously meant for hunting, was turned into a French-style geometrical garden, commonly accessible, wild park areas were still maintained for public use (in the form of English gardens). This way a key moment in the history of the Łazienki Park design, as it was only then that the north-south axis of the park, so clearly visible now, was delineated. The directions are indicated by two ponds, the North Pond and the South Pond, on both sides of the Palace on the Isle. Both have been laid out parallelly to Aleje Jerozolimskie, with the latter also having been located on a south-north axis. The layout, maintained up until today, has become crucial for the harmonious composition of Łazienki.

On the terrace of the Palace on the Isle, one can find two aquatic sculptures: ‘The Allegory of the Bug’ and ‘The Allegory of the Vistula,’ the first versions of which were commissioned by Stanisław August. The park, in turn, boasts ‘The Water Allegory.’ This last sculpture is easy to recognise since it depicts a woman holding a jug directed downwards, pouring water out of it (which is, of course, only possible to see if our imagination manages to animate the stony mass of the stream). However, the most important water-related construction in Łazienki is the Water Tower, also known as the Reservoir. As the name suggests, this is where the water flowing down the scarp would be collected and then channelled through a wooden pipeline to the palace bath and to the fountain on the terrace. The building, currently open to visitors, has the form of a rotunda, and, despite its modest size, has managed to fit an exhibition devoted to the function and significance of water for Łazienki.

The striving to perfect the Łazienki landscape and the wish to attain harmony between nature and culture were both mirrored by the Amphitheatre or, as it used to be called, a theatre on the islet and in the open air. What makes the spot unique is the construction, perfectly embedded into the terrain: the stone amphitheatre has a semicircle shape, the audience is separated from the stage with a strip of water, and the whole is decorated with sentimental ruins of ancient pillars. Actors would approach the stage in boats, using an archway on the left. Such solutions resulted in both nature and the amphitheatre itself forming an element of stage design. The same applies today. After all, one of the scenes from the romantic comedy Planet Single was shot in 2016 on the stage of the Amphitheatre. The dramatic events concerning Ania and Tomek (characters played by Agnieszka Więdłocha and Maciej Stuhr) take place in this very part of the Łazienki Park. The lightning implemented in the scene fully brings out the beauty of the architectural solutions with regard to water, also from the perspective of the actors. And this is how the Royal Łazienki went down in the history of Polish romantic comedy.

However, let’s go back to the 18th century, the time when Łazienki would undergo constant alterations. One was under the impression that the tireless striving for harmony, both architectural and political, constituted a challenge that Poland’s last monarch simply wouldn’t give up, regardless of the cost. And the costs kept rising.

To Old Mokotów by boat

The most significant issue concerning the aquatic construction of the Łazienki Park was the lack of access to water. The year 1784 brought about key changes in this respect. To the painter Marcello Bacciarelli, then residing in Warsaw, the king wrote thus:

Has the excavation for the great pond already begun? Do not inform the Ladies or anyone in advance, since there would cause an upheaval due to the felling of large trees, but once all is done, everyone will deem it right.

Clearly, not only contemporary politicians are (rightly) bothered by the felling of healthy urban trees. The monarch’s project regarding the extension of water reservoirs, adopted for implementation, required not only the felling of trees but also a large supply of water. The hitherto available sources proved insufficient. There was an idea to channel water from the Vistula to Łazienki, yet it was given up due to the threat of flooding the Wilanów and Czerniaków districts. A decision was eventually made to source water from Mokotów. Today, it might not seem too obvious, but this only testifies to the fact that Warsaw’s current aquatic landscape differs starkly from the one in the second half of the 18th century.

Historical maps indicate that, departing from the South Pond by boat, one could reach Princess Izabela Czartoryska Lubomirska’s residence in Mokotów – her ‘Mon Coteau,’ that is ‘My Hill’. In this very spot in the Morskie Oko Park, one can currently find the Szustra Palace (the Lubomirski Palace), home to the headquarter of the Stanisław Moniuszko Warsaw Music Society. In the 18th century, the area of southern Mokotów boasted much more water resources than nowadays. On top of that, they were additionally reinforced by water supplies from the Królikarnia area. On the map of modern Warsaw, one can see the remains of the water line in the form of ponds: from the lakelets in the Arkadia Park next to Króliakrnia through the pond in the Małkowski Square, the Promenada Pond, the Morskie Oko Pond up to the beginning of the southern canal in Łazienki, in Gagarin Street. While they are merely remnants, it was thanks to them that, during Poniatowski’s reign, the water structure of Łazienki functioned according to the monarch’s wishes and the landscape architects’ vision.

Few remember that Stanisław August had wished to be buried in Łazienki. In this context, the words of Nathaniel William Wraxall, an English traveller visiting Warsaw, shed a light on the monarch’s relationship with the place. In 1788, Wraxall wrote that in Łazienki, the king would spend time 'more like a mere mortal than like a crowned head'. History, however, destined him to rest in peace elsewhere.

Nowadays, the Royal Łazienki is not just famous for the museum and the park but also for summer concerts by the Frederick Chopin Monument, the Zone of Silence Music Festival taking place every July, and the Festival of Baroque Opera held every September in the Royal Theatre. The gardens currently cover 76 acres in the very heart of a vibrant city. While that is the present state of things, reconstructions and refurbishments meant to improve the area are still in progress.

Translation from Polish by Anna Potoczny

Language English

enlightement

polish Enlightenment

stanisław august ostatni król polski

stanisław august poniatowski