Serenissima Res Publica Coronae Regni Poloniae Magnique Ducatus Lithuaniae, as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lenkijos Karalystė ir Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė) united by the Union of Lublin was officially called, had two political capitals - Krakow and Vilnius.

The historical - capital function of the former Gediminas castle and the development of central Lithuanian offices obviously determined the all-round flourishing of the city on the Neris. It is therefore not surprising that it was the seat of noble and aristocratic families that built their city palaces. The history of the residences in the modern era and after the partitions of the Republic was as complex as its history. They were rebuilt in the 19th century, then further transformed and devastated during the communist rule, some of them ceased to exist. But still the survivors are visible in the city's landscape, and in recent years work has been underway to restore their splendour and give them a new function.

From 2019 to 2021, Anna Sylwia Czyż, PhD, Prof. UKSW, carried out a research project funded by the Polonics Institute on the 'Residential Modern Architecture of Vilnius up to 1795'. The queries in the Vilnius archives, the comprehensive state of research and the identification of monuments in the city provided surprisingly extensive material for interpretation, but above all for scientific presentation. An obvious consequence of our research projects is the publication of this research. The book Palaces of Vilnius in the 17th-18th centuries is the first attempt at a comprehensive presentation of the history of the magnate and noble residences in Vilnius. The author presents the historical and architectural-urban conditions of the palace architecture of Vilnius in three synthetic-analytical chapters, then the characteristics of the Vilnius circle of architects and builders of the seventeenth-eighteenth century, and in the third chapter the most important trends and deviations in the architectural shape of the Vilnius residences.

The essence of the publication - published in the series 'Studies and Materials' - is a catalogue of 41 palaces. These are both preserved and unpreserved. It takes up two-thirds of the entire book. The catalogue notes were conceived as a monograph of each residence, hence they include, in addition to historical data, formal analyses that were not included in the earlier synthetic part of the book. An extensive, sometimes even dominant part of a given note is taken up by archival extracts, often providing surprising new information. And it is precisely the archival extracts that are another significant value of the book. In addition, each note contains a standard illustrative section, consisting of historical and contemporary cartography, survey drawings and, of course, iconography with selected contemporary photographs. This comprehensive compendium of knowledge about palaces closes with an appendix Dictionary of architects and builders active in Vilnius in the 17th-18th centuries. - the result of painstaking searches and painstaking editorial work - which could be a stand-alone study in its own right.

The book is not only the first scientific dissertation on the palaces of Vilnius, but also the first such synthesis on the palaces of significant cities of the Republic. Warsaw, Krakow, as well as Lviv and Grodno are waiting for a similar study. It is an indisputable contribution to further synthetic and monographic studies of modern noble residences not only in the capital of Lithuania, but also in other historical cities of the former Republic.

Author: Anna Sylwia Czyż

Year of publication: 2021

Number of pages: 698

Cover: Hardback

Format: 205 x 255 mm

ISBN: 978-83-66172-44-9