A former Puławy castle

Matuszkiewicz’s lithograph is a part of the ‘Puławy Album’, a series which is a continuation of the ‘Lubelskie Album’, published in the years 1857-1859 in the respected Warsaw Lithographic Institute of Adolf Pecq and Co. A view of the Puławy Palace from the period after its reconstruction carried out from 1796 by Christian Piotr Aigner. In the years 1731-1831 the building was a temporary and then a permanent residence of the Czartoryski noble family. In the years 1731-1736, the formerly ruined palace was rebuilt at the behest of Maria Zofia née Sieniawska and her husband, August Aleksander Czartoryski. The author of the design of the new residence in the rococo style was the Saxon architect Jan Zygmunt Deybel, who extended it (including the outbuildings and galleries connecting them with the palace). From 1785, the palace became the main seat of Adam Kazimierz and Izabela Czartoryski, who created the centre of Polish cultural life here. At the time, Puławy was one of the most beautiful residences in Poland. In order to embellish it even more, the Czartoryski family contracted Aigner, an outstanding Polish classicist architect born in Puławy, who, among other things, extended the front pavilions of the palace and remodeled the interiors, giving them a classicist decor.