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Street Prophets Friday: King Jan the Third's Summer Palace (open thread/photo diary) [1]

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Date: 2025-07-11

Hello, my weary wanderers. Welcome to another of my fuzzy-headed bits of open-threaded fluff. This week I'm continuing with my series of diaries featuring photos from a recent trip I took to Warsaw, Poland.

In case you're curious how this works, I write up a little diary, declare it to be open and then anyone else with one of these fancy dKos accounts can look at it and hop down to the comments and post whatever they want in the comments.

In my diary from last week, I took you on a little tour of the grounds of the Palace at Wilanów. Unfortunately, there were several photos missing from that diary. I'd like to rectify that now, if I may.

After the first two pictures taken inside the turnstiles, you were supposed to be treated to this wonderful view of the palace courtyard opening up in front of you. The public entrance to the palace is there in the shadows on the right.

Surely you’d have liked to see this beautiful fountain if it hadn't been for the incompetence of a certain lycanthrope.

And out in the formal sculpture garden there was this lovely lady. I gave you two photos of other versions of this sculpture last week, but you were deprived of the coolest!

The artist deserves a mention, don’t you think?

That resin is wonderful stuff to take photos of ...

… and the shape just cries out to be used to frame objects in the background.

Yes, yes, there were more photos! Even more photos that I kept from you, but rather than make this diary a whole “The Grounds of the Palace at Wilanów Part II”— let's get inside.

At this point we were suspecting that the whole place was simply open for a state holiday. The entrance to the grounds had been free, the entrance to the palace itself was also free. We'd signed up to enter at a certain time along with a limited number of other people and we'd assumed it would be a guided tour, but it was nothing of the sort. In fact, most of the articles on display were only minimally labelled. So if you're wondering what half of this stuff is, well— so were we.

Up the stairs and suddenly we're left to wander about on our own. Seems to be a lot of oriental art here— mostly Chinese if I’m any judge.

Amethyst carvings

I was more than a bit smitten by the elegant, minimalist design of these frogs

Surely, in a place like this, you'd bother to look up once in awhile.

Detail with wyvern— decidedly not an oriental design.

I know the catalogue numbers speak volumes—

I'm thinking more Indian than Chinese on Wil. 3613

Shall we dance?

You don't see wallpaper like that around much these days.

I went through some contortions trying to get pictures of the paintings that weren't ruined by glare from the lighting.

Again thinking, not Chinese.

Interesting trio

Greece

A small chapel

I seem to remember the sign saying something about this being the location of a secret stairway.

This whole stairway was home for an art installation.

The empty frames represent the art plundered from Poland during WW II.

Seals and sealing wax

Practically any portrait of a mustachioed man on the premises is bound to be King Jan III himself.

How many portraits of Queen Anna do you own? Studying the details of portraits painted from the original.

A highly detailed oil painting of the palace

Some small copies of famous sculptures. That's Michelangelo's Moses (the one with the horns) in the middle.

A whole section of the palace's attic was dedicated to a collection of locally made pewter

Whew, I think that'll have to do it for this week. Thanks for stopping by.

This is an open thread.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/11/2332867/-Street-Prophets-Friday-King-Jan-the-Third-s-Summer-Palace-open-thread-photo-diary?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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