Presidential Palace - history
The building of the Palace was begun in 1643 by Crown Field Hetman (Commander-in-Chief) Stanislaw Koniecpolski, owner of the town of Brody (80 km east of Lwow (Lvov)) and numerous latifundia situated in the borderland territories of Poland. It was said that he had so much landed property that he could cross all the Republic and spend every night in one of his manors. The building of the Palace was not completed during the hetmans lifetime, as he died unexpectedly in 1646 in his residence in Brody, a few weeks after he remarried a young wife.
The Palace was designed by Konstantyn Tencalla, an official architect of King Wladyslaw IV, author of the King Zygmunt III Wazas statue. The construction was finally completed by his son Aleksander in the style of a Baroque residence, imitating the residences of Northern Italy and Genoa. A view of the Palace in a Warsaw Panorama of 1655 by Eryk Dahlberg confirms this fact. The next owner of the Palace was Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, the Grand Crown Hetman and Crown Chancellor, and later the leader of a rebellion against the king, who bought the Palace from the son of Stanislaw Koniecpolski, Aleksander. In the 17th century, in 1674, the Palace became the property of to the Radziwill family for a period of 144 years. It was bought from Stanislaw Herakliusz and August Hieronim, the descendants of Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, by Michal Kazimierz Radziwill I of the Nieswiez-Olyka line, whose wife Katarzyna was a sister of King Jan III Sobieski.
After her death, her son Karol Stanislaw I started a renovation of the Palace and tidied up its surroundings. He entrusted this task to August Locci, the kings architect. The last but one representative of the line of the heirs in tail of Nieswiez and Olyka was Karol Stanislaw II "Panie Kochanku", voivode (governor) of Wilno (Vilnius), son of Michal Kazimierz II. He inherited gigantic estates from his father and his uncle which made him the wealthiest magnate in Poland in the second half of the 18th century, and one of the richest in Europe. He leased out the Palace to Franciszek Ryx to house a theatre which staged plays and where masked balls were organised. In the period of the 4-year Sejm, he invited, once and for all, representatives of the four debating estates to dine there every day. There were two dinners served there every day - one in the form of a breakfast before the session, given for 300 people, and another in the form of a regular dinner, after the session. One of the most impressive meals given by that representative of the Radziwill family was the feast given on St. Catherines day, the 25th November 1789, the coronation day of King Stanislaw August (Stanislaus Augustus), and to commemorate the Union of Lithuania with the Crown. The feast was given on behalf of our Lithuanian allies. Four thousand invitations were extended for the feast. It cost over 2 million zlotys.
Karol Stanislaw died as a sick and blind man at the age of 57. His property was inherited by Dominik, son of his half-brother Hieronim. Wounded in the battle of Hennau he died childless on 11 November 1813. Thus the line of the Nieswiez-Olyka heirs in tail died out. In the night of 2nd to 3rd May 1791 a delegation of deputies was formed who wanted to save the Republic and the 3rd of May Constitution. In 1818, the Palace became the seat of the Viceroy of the Polish Kingdom. The first Viceroy, from 1815 onwards, was Jozef Zajaczek (1752-1820), once aide-de-champ to Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, deputy to the 4-year Sejm, one of the secretaries of the Assembly of Friends of the Government Act, commander of a division during the Polish-Russian War of 1792, hero of the battle of Zielence, a Polish Jacobin, a soldier of Dabrowskis legions, a Napoleons general. Finally, he adopted the position of utmost servility towards Aleksander I, the Polish king and the Russian tsar, who bestowed on him the title of a duke in 1818. Zajaczek lost a leg at Berezyna and was carried in an armchair by his valets.