The Saxon Garden — public since 1727

Opened to the public in 1727

The ground was once part of Warsaw's fortifications, and in 1666 a palace was built here for Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, bought it in 1713 and set about turning the grounds into a formal garden on the French model. The whole thing belonged to the Saxon Axis, a planned composition that lined up palace, garden and city streets.

Joachim Heinrich Schultze worked on the parterres from 1713 and Gothard Paul Thörl from 1735; Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann and Zacharias Longuelune are named for the wider scheme. The date that matters, though, is 27 May 1727, when the king opened the garden to the inhabitants of Warsaw. That made it the city's first public park and one of the first in the world — a genuinely unusual decision at a time when aristocratic gardens sat behind walls.

The garden was damaged during the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794 and remade as an English landscape park between 1816 and 1827, to a plan by James Savage. Clipped parterres gave way to loose groups of trees and curving paths, and that is broadly the layout you walk through now.

Statues, a water tank and a fountain

About twenty allegorical sandstone figures survive, made before 1745 and mostly from the workshop of Johann Georg Plersch. They represent the seasons, the sciences, the arts and the virtues. A 1745 plan recorded roughly seventy pedestals and some thirty-seven statues still stood in 1797, so the empty plinths scattered through the park are part of the story — four figures were destroyed when the Saxon Palace was blown up in 1944 and were later reconstructed.

In the mid-19th century the architect Henryk Marconi reworked the north-west corner: a willow-fringed pond with a round water tank above it, modelled on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. It looks like a garden folly and was in fact municipal infrastructure. In 1855 Warsaw's first water supply came on line, and with it the Great Fountain, still the largest in any Warsaw park. It was thoroughly restored across 2006 and 2007, and since 2007 a computer has run its jets and evening lighting.

What the wars took

A good deal of the park's old life has to be imagined. The wooden Summer Theatre ran from 1870 and seated over a thousand; it burned down in September 1939 during the defence of Warsaw and was never rebuilt. The palm house of 1894 was destroyed in the Warsaw Uprising, and the widening of Marszałkowska Street took a slice off the western edge.

In 1942 the occupying authorities closed the park to Poles. It had to be cleared of mines after the war and residents came back in April 1945. The water tank and fountain were restored; the theatre and the Brühl Palace were not. Of the Saxon Palace, blown up in 1944, three arcades of the colonnade survived, and since 1925 they have held the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, designed by Stanisław Ostrowski. Strictly speaking that is Piłsudski Square rather than the garden, but nobody visits one without the other.

Small things worth finding

A marble sundial of 1863, funded by Antoni Szeliga Magier, still stands in the garden and still tells the time, with the usual corrections. There is also a monument to the poet Maria Konopnicka and the pond, which in summer collects half the neighbourhood. Along the eastern edge the garden meets the site where the west side of Piłsudski Square is to be rebuilt; survey and archaeological work is under way there, so the immediate surroundings are not what older photographs show.

Getting there

• By metro — Ratusz Arsenał and Świętokrzyska stations are both a few minutes' walk from the gates.
• By tram and bus — Marszałkowska and Królewska are main transit corridors, with stops on either side of the park.
• On foot — the garden sits between Piłsudski Square and Marszałkowska, a quarter of an hour from the Old Town, so it slots neatly into a walk through the centre.
• By car — this is the middle of the paid parking zone and of the city's busiest traffic; public transport is simply quicker here.

Before you go

The park is open and free, so it needs no planning, but early morning and early evening are far pleasanter than the lunch hour, when the surrounding offices come out for a walk. An hour is enough for a circuit with stops at the statues and the fountain.

Paths are surfaced and mostly level, which helps with a pushchair or a wheelchair. On a hot day this is one of the few patches of shade in the district, and the water makes a measurable difference. In winter the place empties out and the composition of the garden reads most clearly, with no leaves blocking the sightlines.

How to get there and practical info

Location

central Warsaw, between Piłsudski Square and Marszałkowska Street

Area

about fifteen hectares

What to see

baroque allegorical statues, the Great Fountain, the temple-shaped water tank, the sundial, the pond

Opened to the public

27 May 1727

Status

on the register of monuments since 1965; the Saxon Axis falls within the Historic Monument „Warsaw — historic centre with the Royal Route and Wilanów”

Time needed

an hour for an unhurried circuit

Without a car

metro to Ratusz Arsenał or Świętokrzyska, trams and buses along Marszałkowska and Królewska

Accessibility

surfaced, mostly level paths; admission free

Current hours and tickets

the park is open and free of charge; notices about works and closures are published by the Warsaw municipal greenery authority

When to go