Agrykola, Warszawa

Agrykola is a park-lined street beside Royal Łazienki in Warsaw’s Śródmieście district. It was laid out during the years seventeen seventy-eight and seventeen seventy-nine as a new approach to the royal gardens, which extend along both sides of the route. The architect associated with Agrykola is Dominik Merlini.

Its name commemorates Karol Ludwik Agricola, an army officer who directed the building work. Notice the roadway’s climb: this route rises for about half a kilometre at an average gradient of five point two percent, becoming steeper near its end. After the war, Warsaw residents used this slope as a natural sledding course.

A stone bridge was built as part of the route, then enlarged with two extra spans in seventeen eighty-eight. That year also brought the unveiling of the monument to King Jan the Third Sobieski beside the bridge, funded by King Stanisław August. Gas lamps installed along the upper stretch after nineteen oh seven still operate. In nineteen forty-five, the bodies of forty-two people who died during the Warsaw Uprising were found in a storm drain beneath the street.