The Presidential Palace (Polish: Pałac Prezydencki) is the official residence of the Polish head of state and president alongside the Belweder Palace, located in Warsaw, Poland. Originally constructed in 1643 as an aristocratic mansion, it was rebuilt and remodelled several times over the course of its existence by notable architects. The current neoclassical palace was completed in 1818.
Throughout its history, the palace was a venue for important historical events in Polish, European, and world history. In 1791, the facility hosted authors and advocates of the Constitution of May 3, 1791, the first modern European constitution. In 1818, the palace began its ongoing career as a governmental structure when it became the seat of the Viceroy (namiestnik) of Congress Poland.
Following Poland's resurrection after World War I, in 1918, the building was taken over by the newly reconstituted Polish authorities and became the seat of the Council of Ministers. During World War II, it served as a Deutsches Haus for the country's German occupiers and survived the 1944 Warsaw Uprising intact. After the war, it resumed its function as seat of the Polish Council of Ministers. On 14 May 1955, the Warsaw Pact was signed inside the Presidential Palace between the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries. Since July 1994, the palace has been the official seat of the president of the Republic of Poland.
History
Construction of the present-day Presidential Palace in Warsaw was begun in 1643 by Crown Great Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski, owner of the town of Brody (80 km. east of Lwów) and of numerous latifundia situated in Poland's eastern borderlands; hence the palace's first name was "Pałac Koniecpolskich"—the "Koniecpolski Palace". It was said that he owned so much landed property that he could cross the breadth of the Commonwealth while spending every night in one of his own manors. The palace was not completed in the Hetman's lifetime, as he died unexpectedly in 1646 at his Brody residence, a few weeks after taking a young wife.
The palace's architect was Constantino Tencalla, architect to Poland's King Władysław IV and designer of Sigismund's Column, in front of the nearby Royal Castle, commemorating Sigismund III of Poland. The palace was completed by Koniecpolski's son Aleksander in the style of a baroque residence, imitating those of northern Italy and Genoa. A view of the palace in a Warsaw panorama of 1656 by Erik Dahlberg confirms this.
The next owner of the palace was Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski—Grand Crown Hetman and Crown Chancellor, and later the leader of a rebellion against the king—who bought the palace from Aleksander Koniecpolski.
In 1674 the palace became, for the next 144 years, the property of the Radziwiłł family.
It was bought from descendants of Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski—Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski and Hieronim Augustyn Lubomirski—by Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł of the Nieśwież–Ołyka line, whose wife Katarzyna was a sister of King Jan III Sobieski. After her death, her son Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł I began renovation of the palace and tidied up its surroundings. He entrusted this task to the king's architect, Augustyn Locci.
The next-to-last heir in tail of Nieśwież and Ołyka was Karol Stanisław "Panie Kochanku" Radziwiłł, Voivode of Vilnius, son of Michał Kazimierz "Rybeńko" Radziwiłł. He had inherited huge estates from his father and uncle which made him the wealthiest magnate in Poland in the second half of the 18th century, and one of the richest men in Europe. He leased out the palace to Franciszek Ryx to house a theater which staged plays and threw masked balls. During the Four-Year Sejm of 1788–1792, he invited all the members of the four deliberating estates to dine there daily. Two meals were served every day: breakfast before the day's session, for 300 people, and dinner after the session. One of the most impressive feasts given by him was on St. Catherine's Day, November 25, 1789, the 25th anniversary of King Stanisław August's coronation, and commemorating the Union of Lithuania with the Polish Crown. Four thousand guests were invited, and the feast cost over 2 million zlotys.
On the night of May 2–3, 1791, a conspiratorial group of members of the Four-Year Sejm who were bent on saving the Commonwealth met at the palace to strategize means to secure the adoption, next day, of the May 3rd Constitution. This document is called "the first constitution of its kind in Europe" by historian Norman Davies.