Maison Gothique

Duchess Izabela Czartoryska built a new, second museum pavilion in Puławy, the Gothic House, to house her growing collection. It was inspired by romantic, neo-gothic buildings, especially Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Castle near London (rebuilt in 1750), the German Gothic House of Prince Leopold Anhalt-Dessau in Wörlitz (1773) or the Gothic House of Helena Radziwłł in Nieborów (1795-1797).

The inauguration and symbolic opening of the building designed by Chrystian Piotr Aigner took place in May 1809. The ceremony was honoured by the triumphant arrival of Prince Józef Poniatowski with the victorious army liberating the so-called Western Galicia occupied by Austria, including the area of Puławy. The official opening of the interior of the Gothic House took place on 25 March 1811.

The objects collected in the new pavilion were personally listed by the Duchess in topographical order. This inventory was printed in Warsaw in the Catalogue of memorabilia preserved in the Gothic House in Puławy (1828). The collection included national mementoes, a collection of European art with masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci (Lady with an Ermine), Raphael (Portrait of a Young Man considered to be the artist's self-portrait) and Rembrandt (Landscape with the Good Samaritan) as well as numerous sentimental souvenirs and historical curiosities. The idea of creating the Puławy collection is explained by the founder's words: “In those years, when so many disasters befell us, when we were erased from the ranks of nations, I used to say to myself with tears in my eyes: Homeland! I could not defend you, let me at least immortalize you. This desire, this feeling bound me to life. [...]. The Gothic House, which contains foreign memorabilia, seemed vain and insignificant to me, until I included some memories of my homeland. The stone fragments, the marble, the inscriptions which adorn one wall of the gallery and the turret, the cannon balls under the columns of Augustus II [columns from the burned Blue Palace in Warsaw, owned by the Czartoryskis, formerly in the possession of King Augustus II], these are memories dear to Poland.”

After the November Uprising the museum came to an end. The priceless collections were hidden near Puławy, then transported to Sieniawa and later to Paris. After many years they returned to Poland where they were placed in Krakow, in the Czartoryski Museum opened in 1876.

Renata Bartnik