The White House: a Pavilion for an Exiled King
Why is it significant?
Come closer to the little square house with its plain white walls and its tall windows: it looks almost too modest for a royal park, like a villa where someone sensible might spend a quiet summer.
Key Facts
| Place | The White House: a Pavilion for an Exiled King |
|---|---|
| Address | Łazienki Królewskie, ul. Agrykola 1, 00-460 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.21530, 21.03160 |
| Part of Walk | Warsaw's Green Royal Route: Aleje Ujazdowskie to Łazienki Park, Chopin and the Palace on the Isle |
| Generated | Generated |
Come closer to the little square house with its plain white walls and its tall windows: it looks almost too modest for a royal park, like a villa where someone sensible might spend a quiet summer. Varsovians call it Biały Domek, the White House, and it was one of the first buildings the king put up in Łazienki.
It was designed by Dominik Merlini and built in the 1770s, when the park was still being shaped from old hunting grounds and a baroque bathhouse. Tradition says it was used by women close to the king, above all Elżbieta Grabowska, his long-time companion, whom many historians believe he secretly married.
Then, a few years after the last partition of Poland, the house received a most unexpected guest. From 1801 to 1804 it was the home of Louis Stanislas Xavier, the brother of the executed Louis the Sixteenth, a French prince in exile, wandering Europe with his small court and waiting for Napoleon to fall. He waited a long time, but in 1814 he finally returned to Paris as King Louis the Eighteenth. For three years the future King of France lived in this little white box in a Warsaw park.
What makes the White House precious today is what is inside. Unlike the larger palaces, which were burned and stripped in 1944, its delicate eighteenth-century interiors largely survived, with delicate painted wall decorations. It is one of the rare places in Warsaw where you can stand in rooms exactly as their first owners knew them.
Before you move on, scan the trees around you. Łazienki's red squirrels are famously bold here and will come almost to your shoes if they suspect you have nuts, and in the shrubbery you may hear the strange cry of a peacock, somewhere between a cat and a trumpet. Now follow the path east down to the lake, where a palace seems to float on the water.