Saxon Palace Reappears In Warsaw

Among the architectural monuments of the Polish capital destroyed by the war, a special place is occupied by the Saxon Palace, built in 1724 by the Dresden architect M.D. Pöppelman on the orders of the Saxon Elector and the Polish king Augustus the Great. Together with the Saxon Park and the Opera House, he formed the so-called. "the Saxon axis". Of the entire complex on Pilsudski Square, only a part of the arcade has survived, which served as a monument to the Unknown Soldier. Although the restoration of buildings destroyed during the Second World War was for many years the primary task of the Polish authorities, difficulties arose with the reconstruction of the Saxon Palace: on the site of one of the outbuildings, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky. Therefore, the entire wing will not be restored, and an elite residential building will appear in the vacant space. A group of historians who supported the authentic project opposed it. Despite this, the Warsaw administration approved a "truncated version". The program of reconstruction of destroyed monuments of architecture pursues as its goal an approximate recreation of the pre-war appearance of the capital of Poland, although all its participants understand the fundamental difference between the "remakes" and the original historical buildings.