Saxon Garden

On 27 May 1727 King Augustus II the Strong opened the garden of his Warsaw palace to the townspeople — creating Poland's first public park. Anyone could come in, as long as they were decently dressed. Today the Saxon Garden covers 15.5 hectares between Piłsudski Square and Marszałkowska Street, with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Baroque statues and a fountain where Warsaw couples have met for generations.

History: from Versailles style to an English park

The garden was laid out in 1724–1748 as a formal French garden behind the Saxon Palace, on the so-called Saxon Axis. It was designed by the court architects of the Wettin dynasty, who ruled both Saxony and Poland: Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann — creator of the Zwinger in Dresden — and Zacharias Longuelune, joined from 1733 by Carl Friedrich Pöppelmann and Johann Christoph von Naumann. In 1748 Augustus III built an opera house here, the first free-standing purpose-built theatre in Poland. The garden was ravaged during the Kościuszko Uprising, and in 1816–1827 James Savage turned it into a Romantic English-style park, swapping symmetrical parterres for winding paths.

The 19th century: water, film and electric light

For decades the garden was Warsaw's drawing room and a showcase for new technology. On 16 June 1855 Henryk Marconi's first municipal waterworks went into service; a water tower shaped like the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli was built in the park, and a fountain — still here — on the main axis. A wooden Summer Theatre seating over a thousand people opened in 1870, one of the city's first playgrounds in 1899, and from 31 March to 2 April 1902 the inventor Kazimierz Prószyński screened some of the earliest Polish films here. Electric street lamps lit the paths from 1906. Access was not entirely free, though: a policeman stood at each gate, and drunk or "slovenly dressed" visitors were turned away.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Since 2 November 1925 an unknown soldier who died defending Lviv has rested in the arcades of the former Saxon Palace. The triple arcade, designed by Stanisław Ostrowski, is the only part of the palace colonnade that survived when German troops blew up the building at the end of 1944. Polish soldiers stand guard at the tomb, and the ceremonial changing of the guard takes place every hour.

What to see

• Marconi's fountain (1855) on the Saxon Axis — since 2007 a computer controls the water flow and evening lighting.
• Baroque statues from the workshop of Johann Georg Plersch: allegories of virtues, sciences, arts and seasons. Of some 70 pedestals on the 1745 plan, only part of the sculptures survived; the rest were lost or taken to St Petersburg after 1794.
• The water tower by the pond in the north-west corner and a marble sundial from 1863.
• Old horse chestnuts, limes and ginkgos — some trees survived the war.

Did you know?

In June 1862 the garden saw a failed assassination attempt on Alexander Lüders, the Russian governor of the Kingdom of Poland. On 4 May 1942 the German occupiers closed the park to Poles, and in April 1945, once cleared of mines, it was handed back to the city. A memorial stone from 1927 marks the park's 200th anniversary as a public garden.

Tripto tip

Allow 45–60 minutes for the fountain, the statues and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; the best route follows the Saxon Axis west from Piłsudski Square. Arrive on the hour to see the changing of the guard. The garden is a few minutes' walk from Krakowskie Przedmieście and the Old Town, so it fits easily into a city-centre walk. The eastern part of the park is affected by the plan to rebuild the Saxon Palace — in 2023 the project announced that 60 trees would be felled and 90 replanted — so expect changes to the paths there.