Krasiński Palace: The Library That Burned After the Battle

Why is it significant?

Stand on the edge of Plac Krasińskich and face the long, pale Baroque palace on the western side of the square, with a crowded triangle of carved figures fighting above its entrance.

Key Facts

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Stand on the edge of Plac Krasińskich and face the long, pale Baroque palace on the western side of the square, with a crowded triangle of carved figures fighting above its entrance. This is the Krasiński Palace, and it is the right place to begin a walk about the summer of 1944, because it teaches the first lesson of this city: in Warsaw, whatever looks old is usually younger than you think. The palace was built in the 1680s for Jan Dobrogost Krasiński, one of the great magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to designs by Tylman van Gameren, a Dutch engineer who became the busiest architect of Baroque Warsaw. The pediment reliefs are by Andreas Schlüter, who later made his name in Berlin. They show a Roman hero, Marcus Valerius Corvus, duelling a giant Gaul while a raven on his helmet attacks the enemy. The Krasińskis claimed him as their ancestor, and the raven became their coat of arms. Every great family wanted a Roman forefather... this one simply carved theirs in stone. By the Second World War the palace held the special collections of the National Library: medieval manuscripts, early printed books, maps, music and drawings, gathered here for safety. Safety is a cruel word in this story. In October 1944, after the Uprising had surrendered and the population had been driven out, German burning and demolition squads went through the empty city building by building. The collections in this palace were set on fire on purpose. A huge part of Poland's written heritage turned to ash, not in battle, but after the shooting had stopped. What you see is a post-war reconstruction, and today the palace once again keeps the library's special collections. There is one more ghost on this square. In the spring of 1943, while the Jewish ghetto burned behind its wall a few streets away, a carousel was turning here, with music and laughing riders. The poet Czesław Miłosz put that carousel into his poem Campo di Fiori, and it has never stopped turning in Polish memory. Remember the date on which this walk is really built: 1 August 1944, five in the afternoon. Everything you will see today is a consequence of that hour. Now cross the square towards the great bronze group in front of you, where soldiers seem to burst straight out of the ground.