The Branicki Palace – a historic building in Białystok, one of the best preserved aristocratic residences built in the former Republic of Poland during Saxon times. The Palace was erected in the late baroque style, also called “Podlaski Versailles”, Northern Versailles, or Polish Versailles.
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History of the Castle
The Wiesiołowski Castle - gothic-renaissance
The first information about the existence of a settlement in the place of the palace come from the 16th century. At the time, there was probably located a manor house of the royal secretary Mikołaj Raczkowicz. After he died, his wife- Katarzyna Wołłowiczówna merged the manor with the property of her second husband- Piotr Wiesiołowski. It was him that ordered the royal builder Hiob Bretfus to erect in Białystok a gothic-renaissance castle. The two-storey castle was surrounded with a fosse and ground fortifications.
For contributions in the war with Sweden, Stefan Czarniecki was given by the Parliament the Białystok lands. Next, he gave Białystok with the castle to his daughter Katarzyna Aleksandra, the wife of Jan Klemens Branicki, a Crown Esquire carver. Since that moment, the castle became the residence of the Branicki family with “Griffin” as the coat of arms.
History of the Palace
Stefan Mikołaj Branicki, father of the Grand Commander of the Crown- Jan Klemens Branicki, ordered Tylman of Gameren to rebuild the Wiesiołowski castle into a baroque residence. Tylman was an engineer that came from Utrecht, the Netherlands, and was famous, i.e. for building the Krasiński Palace in Warsaw and the residence of primate Michał Radziejowski in Nieborów. The reconstruction conducted from 1691 to 1697 completely changed the image of the building. Nowadays, the former war history of the castle is resembled only by an outline of a bastion nearby the pond. There is also a legend about an underground passage from the castle to a tower of the nearby parish church, which in the 17th century was also adapted for defensive purposes.
The following outward extensions of the palace were made by Jan Klemens Branicki and his wife Izabela Poniatowska. From 1728 it was Jan Zygmunt Deybel that supervised rebuilding of the palace. He directed creation of one more storey, a tympanum on the side of the façade, and helmets on the towers built at times of Tylman of Gameren. After the death of Deybel, Jakub Fontana managed the reconstruction from 1750 to 1771, it was also him that finally shaped the palace, vestibule, Rococo interiors, and in 1754, he added the staircase with sculptures by Jan Chryzostom Redler „Rotator”, and two atlases.
In 1754, hetman (military commander) created the first military school in Poland– the Military School of Building and Engineering, it was located by the palace. Then, there was the School of Midwifery, and in 1773, due to the decision of the Commission of National Education, the Academic School of Białystok Assembly.
According to the will of hetman Branicki, his wife Izabella was supposed to possess the palace to her death, and then it was to be taken over by the Potocki family. However, due to the fall of the Republic of Poland, the inheritors of the residence sold it in 1802 to the Prussian King, marking that it could not be taken over before Izabella’s death. After the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, Russian tsar Alexander I became the owner of the palace.
After Russian annexation of parts of Poland, the palace and its equipment were thoroughly plundered. Trees and bushes were transported to tsar’s residences, and over twenty sculptures from the garden were taken to Petersburg. In 1826, the sculptures decorating the attics were destroyed, and rococo ornaments on the façade were thrown off, as were the baroque helmets on the roof. According to tsar’s decree, in 1841 the palace interiors were adapted for a boarding house for girls from Russian upper class – the Wellborn Girls Institute. At the time, over one hundred statues from the palace’s French garden were taken away. The reason for that was that the naked monuments could deprave the attendees.
During World War I, the palace did nor suffer any major harms. It was a location for, among others, a field hospital. After the war, the palace was turned into the headquarters of the provincial office and its chief’s residence.
In the course of the Polish-Bolshevik war, the palace became the headquarters of the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee.
In 1944, it was destroyed in 70 percent by withdrawing Germans. A big part of what left was also destroyed in the same year by the Red Army. The palace was rebuilt from 1946 to 1960, and the process of rebuilding was conducted by Stanisław Bukowski. The whole reconstruction aimed to resemble the palace condition in the 18th century, however, the haste of rebuilding did not let to complete all documentation, thus the reconstruction of the interiors is not really accurate.
Currently, the palace is the headquarters of the Medical University of Białystok.