Warsaw - Staszic Palace, Poland
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Staszic Palace - Wikipedia
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Staszic Palace, Polish: Palac Staszica; IPA: ['pawats stat'sitsa]), is a building at ulica Nowy Swiat72, Warsaw, Poland. It is home to the Polish Academy of Sciences.
The history of the Staszic Palace dates from 1620, when King Sigismund III of Poland ordered the construction of a small Eastern Orthodox chapel, as an appropriate burial place for the former Tsar Vasili IV of Russia and his brother, Dmitry Shuisky, who had died in Polish custody after having been captured several years earlier during the Polish-Muscovite War of 1605-18.
The Polish capital was populated mainly by Catholics, Protestants, or Jews. Therefore, an Orthodox chapel was not needed. In 1668, another Polish king John II Casimir transferred the chapel to Dominican Order. They were the caretakers of this building until 1808.
Stanislaw Staszic purchased the building in 1818. He was a prominent figure of the Polish Enlightenment and commissioned its renovation. Antonio Corazzi was the architect responsible for redesigning the palace in a neoclassical style. Staszic gave the building to the Society of Friends of Science after the renovation (1820-1923). This was the first Polish learned society dedicated solely to Science.
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (diplomat and polymath) unveiled Bertel Thorvaldsen’s monument to Nicolaus copernicus in front the palace on May 11, 1830. [1]
The Russian authorities banned the Society after the November 1830 Uprising vs the occupying Russian Imperial. They had ruled Warsaw most of their time since 1795, when Poland was partitioned. The organisers of a lottery used the palace for 26 years.