Pulawy Czartoryski Park

After the partitions Pulawy became the centre of Polish cultural life outside the capital, and the park Izabela Czartoryska laid out around the family palace from the 1780s is where the idea of a national museum began. She built the Temple of the Sibyl in 1801, a round classical pavilion modelled on Tivoli, and filled it with relics of Polish history - arms, standards, objects associated with kings - under the inscription that the past is to the future. Beside it she put up the Gothic House, an asymmetrical pavilion studded with stones and fragments collected from ruins across Europe, holding foreign and personal memorabilia. Together these were the first public museum collection in Poland; the material later became the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, where the Leonardo hangs. The park itself is a landscape garden of about thirty hectares on the Vistula escarpment with bridges, a Chinese pavilion and old trees, and the palace now houses an agricultural research institute.

What you actually see

• The Temple of the Sibyl - a round classical pavilion of 1801 on the Tivoli model.
• The Gothic House - studded with fragments collected from ruins across Europe.
• The first Polish museum - the collection that became the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow.
• A thirty-hectare landscape park - on the Vistula escarpment with bridges and old trees.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The original collections are in Krakow - the pavilions here are largely empty of them. Pavilion opening is seasonal and limited. The palace is an institute and is not a museum. Pulawy is otherwise an industrial town.

Nearby

Kazimierz Dolny is downstream; Naleczow is south.