#historical places
The Palace on the Water - Łazienki Palace - Warsaw, Poland
Originally a bathhouse for the aristocrat Stanislas Lubormirski, it was completely remodelled by Poland’s Last King, Stanislas August Poniatowski (r.1764-95) who made it his Summer Residence.
Unfortunately, the end of the reign of Stanislaus Augustus resulted in the gradual deterioration of his much loved park. The tsars, who took possession in 1817, treated the neoclassical palace as a secondary office. At that time many valuable works of art and objects were removed and taken to Russia. In the years between the two World Wars, under the management of the State Art Collections, the Royal Łazienki briefly regained its former glory.
During World War II, the Palace was extensively plundered and heavily damaged by the German occupiers. Holes were drilled into the walls for explosives but thankfully they never got around to blowing up the Palace. In 1960, after many years of careful restoration, the Royal Łazienki was returned to the Polish people as a museum.
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While visiting the Ionian Islands in western Greece, we will now ferry to the largest: Kefalonia. This island is home to the Melissani Cave, which features a lake surrounded with trees and forest and is located east of the mountains of Evmorfia and Agia Dynati. It forms a kind of ‘cenote’ similar to those in the Yucatán peninsula. In Greek mythology, Melissani was the Cave of the Nymphs.
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Hello, lovely souls
Today I published a poem dear to me, called King of the Garden. I first started writing it back in June, during my trip to Croatia. While there, we visited Stari Grad, a small town on the island Hvar. It was once a home of Petar Hektorović, a Croatian poet and writer. He lived in 16th century and during his lifetime, he designed and built Tvrdalj, a palace on the island with a charming garden and renaissance architecture. The beautiful pond in the center has a wonderful quality: the fish can freely swim there from the sea through a tunnel, so they have a choice to be there. The color shifting emerald water is mesmerizing. The garden is a blooming hideaway place and the plants and trees that grow there are still the same as centuries ago, when the poet took care of the garden himself. Tvrdalj was a place that everyone could find a shelter in, listen to poetry and ancient works from Petar. Everyone around the place and the visitors said that it seems like the time stopped there, half a millenium ago. It’s such a true and beautiful concept, so I started the poem with the words ‘You have found immortality…’.
I really wanted to tell you about this place and provide with some pictures so hopefully you’ll read the poem now, having them in your mind. I really wish to come back to the garden some day and absorb more of the poetry still existing in the flowers, fauna and the silent wise stone.
Lyceum Philippines, 2019
