Park Ujazdowski, Warsaw

Park Ujazdowski is a historic park beside Aleje Ujazdowskie, set between Piękna Street and Plac Na Rozdrożu. The pond, fountains, and chestnut avenue give this urban refuge its composed, almost theatrical character. Long before these paths existed, the site formed part of the medieval village of Ujazdów.

King Sigismund the Third Vasa had a palace and garden created here during the early seventeenth century. Later, King Stanisław August Poniatowski moved the village away and remade its former ground as Pole Marsowe, a parade field inspired by Paris. After Warsaw came under Russian rule following the Napoleonic Wars, fairs and summer amusements replaced military spectacle.

In eighteen ninety-three, Mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz engaged garden designer Franciszek Szanior to turn the ground into a public park. Szanior combined the free-flowing mood of a Romantic garden with the formal routes of Baroque planning. At the pond, the reinforced-concrete bridge by engineer William Lindley recalls the park’s unusually ambitious beginnings.

It was only the second bridge of its material built anywhere in the world. A monument to pianist and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski joined the park after the war.