Park Morskie Oko, Warszawa

Park Morskie Oko unfolds across Mokotów as a landscape of water, slope, and repeated reinvention. Its grounds cover 17.9 hectares, reaching through Old Mokotów and Sielce. Notice the pond’s still surface: it began as a clay pit that filled with water.

Warsaw’s escarpment divides the park into the Morskie Oko section above and the Promenada section below, and artificial ponds belong to both parts. The southern grounds began in 1774 as gardens for Princess Elżbieta Izabela Lubomirska’s Szuster Palace. Ephraim Schröger designed the palace, while Szymon Bogumił Zug planned the gardens.

The estate carried the French name Mon Coteau, meaning “my hill.” It later became a popular leisure destination called Promenada. War devastated this place: nearly all its trees were felled, and the palace was destroyed in 1944.

Postwar rebuilding restored the palace and reshaped the park into its present form in 1958. Look for Jan Matejko’s monument near Puławska Street, installed in 1994 to honour the nineteenth-century painter.