History
The Saxon Garden was originally the site of Warsaw fortifications, "Sigismund's Ramparts," and of a palace built in 1666 for the powerful aristocrat, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. The garden was extended in the reign of King Augustus II, who attached it to the "Saxon Axis", a line of parks and palaces linking the western outskirts of Warsaw with the Vistula River.
The park of the adjoining Saxon Palace was opened to the public on 27 May 1727. It became a public park before Versailles (1791), the Pavlovsk Palace, Peterhof Palace and Summer Garden (1918), Villa d'Este (1920), Kuskovo (1939), Stourhead (1946), Sissinghurst (1967), Stowe (1990), Vaux-le-Vicomte (1990s), and most other world-famous parks and gardens.
Initially a Baroque French-style park, in the 19th century it was turned into a Romantic English-style landscape park. Destroyed during and after the Warsaw Uprising, it was partly reconstructed after World War II.
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