WARSAW, POLAND—Notes from Poland reports that architectural elements from a once-splendid Polish royal villa were recently rescued from the bottom of the Vistula River. Villa Regia was built in Warsaw between 1637 and 1642 as the summer residence for the Polish king Wladyslaw IV Vasa (reigned 1632–1648). Designed in the baroque style, the palace was considered one of the most luxurious residences in Europe. When the Swedish army invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1656, soldiers plundered much of the city of Warsaw, including the palace. Many of its treasures were looted and loaded on a barge to be shipped back to Scandinavia. However, the boat capsized and its contents spilled into the river, where archaeologists have retrieved more than 20 tons of material over the past 15 years. “Each year, the river reveals new relics of its past,” said University of Warsaw archaeologist Hubert Kowalski. A team recently recovered a column fragment and a 450-pound section of an arch that once formed part of the palace’s arcade. Workers at the Polish History Museum are currently rebuilding part of the lost villa, and museum officials are confident that the newly-discovered architectural segment will fit nicely into that reconstruction. For more on seventeenth-century Poland, go to "Honoring the Dead."
