A hunting wood turned into a garden
South of central Warsaw, behind Wilanów Palace, lies a patch of floodplain forest that served as a hunting ground until the end of the 18th century. The owners of Wilanów called it simply the Wood on the Island, and the water around it justified the name: the Sobieski Canal and Lake Wilanowskie to the west, the little Wilanówka river to the east.
In the early 19th century Aleksandra Potocka had the northern part rebuilt as a garden in the Romantic taste of the day. The name came from her youngest grandson, Maurycy Eustachy Potocki, known in the family as Moryś. What was designed here was not the nature but the way you meet it: single buildings set in the woods, to be come across on a walk rather than admired from an avenue.
Four ruins and a forester's lodge
- The rotunda pavilion — a circular neoclassical villa of 1811, designed by Chrystian Piotr Aigner; the outer walls survive
- The neo-Gothic gate — 1846, designed by Henryk Marconi
- The gatekeeper's house — 1850, by Franciszek Maria Lanci
- The Oraculum — 1825: a stone figure of a pagan deity standing between two columns
- The gajówka — a wooden forester's lodge of 1846, the only one of these buildings that is not a ruin
What the forest has made of it
Since 1996 the northern part has been a nature reserve of just under 53.5 hectares, ringed by a buffer zone more than four times that size. It protects a remnant of Vistula floodplain forest, a habitat that has almost vanished inside the city limits because it needs wet ground and wet ground is what cities drain first.
Seventeen trees here are protected as natural monuments: white poplars, small-leaved limes, ash and elm. Deadwood is left where it falls, since most of the insects and fungi depend on it. Until 2014 you needed a permit to enter. Since the management plan took effect, the paths marked in it are open to everyone; they run past the ruined gatekeeper's house towards the rotunda and the forester's lodge.
1941, at the edge of the park
In October 1941 the German occupiers set up a labour detachment for Soviet prisoners of war beside the park, a satellite of the camp at Beniaminów. Around four hundred and fifty men passed through it; when it was wound up in December 1944, some sixty were still alive.
After the war Morysin was left out of the major restoration work at Wilanów and crumbled for decades. Only in recent years have archaeologists uncovered paving and fragments of stucco decoration at the rotunda. The museum has announced plans to stabilise what remains, restore part of the decoration and bring the site into its regular visitor route.
Getting there
- By bus — city buses run to the terminus by Wilanów Palace; from there walk along Lake Wilanowskie
- By car — the car parks serve the palace, and the reserve itself is reached on foot only
- By bike — paths along the Wilanówka and the Sobieski Canal link Morysin with Wilanów and Powsin
- On foot from Wilanów — about fifteen minutes from the palace garden
Before you go in
Morysin is not a municipal park and nothing in it has been smoothed over. The paths are bare earth, water stands in them for days after rain, and the mosquitoes arrive early and stay into September. Solid shoes and long sleeves matter more here than any guidebook.
The ruins are being stabilised but are not yet safe; the fences and signs are there for a reason. The site shows itself best outside the growing season: from November to April the rotunda and the gate emerge from the greenery, and only then can you see how they were meant to relate to one another. It is worth pairing Morysin with the palace. The contrast between a manicured Baroque garden and a wood that has grown over its own ruins is, in the end, the point of the place.
How to get there and practical info
- Location
- Warsaw, Wilanów district — between Lake Wilanowskie, the Sobieski Canal and the Wilanówka
- Reserve area
- just under 53.5 ha, with a buffer zone of over 250 ha
- Protection
- nature reserve since 1996; the grounds are on the register of monuments as part of the Wilanów complex
- Historic monument
- included in Warsaw's "historic urban complex with the Royal Route and Wilanów", designated on 16 September 1994
- Time needed
- an hour and a half for the paths, half a day combined with Wilanów Palace
- Access
- unsurfaced and sometimes waterlogged paths, not suitable for wheelchairs
- Current hours and tickets
- entry to the reserve is free; path closures and the state of conservation work are announced by the Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów
When to go
The floodplain forest leafs out fast and the ground flora flowers briefly. The best time for birds, while the canopy is still open.
The coolest corner of this part of Warsaw, and the one with the most mosquitoes; paths turn muddy after storms.
Poplars and ash colour over the water, and the falling leaves bring the rotunda's walls back into view.
With the leaves gone the whole layout reads at once, and frost dries the paths that are wet the rest of the year.
Other sights in Warszawa
Straight-line distances from „Morysin" — calculated from real coordinates. By road it is often further.
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