The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Ankara was the first building to be designed and built as a diplomatic mission in the reborn Republic of Poland. It was erected on a large plot of land in the centre of the high profile district of Çankaya, and it featured a style quite unusual for the Turkish capital. It was made to look like a "Polish manor house modeled on the Belweder Palace"; thus the very form of the building was intended as an element of the state's foreign policy and the promotion of Polish art abroad.

The beginnings of the Polish mission in Ankara
The Polish diplomatic mission in Ankara was established in June 1924. Its location in the new capital of Turkey enabled direct access to the state authorities and expressed Poland’s support for the Turkish national policy of Kemal Atatürk. While most representatives of European countries still resided in Istanbul and were not considering building embassies, Polish diplomats began to create lasting and strong international relations. In terms of logistics, however, this was not easy.

The first envoy of the Republic of Poland in Turkey, Roman Knoll, started his office in a makeshift building, with a leaking roof, a dozen or so kilometers away from the city. Władysław Günther, the charge d'affaires, compared this situation to that of colonial pioneers. Soon the decision was taken to construct the proper mission building.

The embassy was to be built in Çankaya, the diplomatic center of Ankara, home also to the seat of the President of Turkey. The plot was donated by the Turkish government, and on 3 May 1927 the ceremony of the consecration of the cornerstone took place. It was Władysław Günther who suggested giving the building a style reminiscent of Warsaw’s Belweder Palace, and Karol Iwanicki was appointed to carry out this task.

Warsaw’s Belweder Palace in Turkey
The building designed by Iwanicki was neo-classical in style and referred to the Polish manor house - then considered the epitome of Polish architecture. The building’s layout resembled the letter E - it was built on a rectangular plan with three rearward transverse wings and corresponding shallow avant-corps in the façade. The ground floor was designed for offices, while the first floor was to be used for official functions. The rear wings of the building were designed to provide residential accommodation for employees.

The building's facade is dominated by a magnificent four-column portico with Ionic columns in the giant order. They support a pediment, in which the tympanum is decorated with the relief emblem of the Republic of Poland, the crowned eagle. The whole creates an impression of grandeur, in line with the function of the building.

The furnishings and decoration of the interiors emphasize the official role of the building. The interiors are designed to impress, like the dining room with a set of Polish art déco furniture, the Raspberry Lounge furnished in the Louis XVI style, or the Music Room additionally decorated with relief panoramas of Warsaw, Cracow, Vilnius and Poznan. The original chandeliers, lamps and other metal elements, such as handles and door knobs, were produced by the Warsaw workshop of the Łopieński Brothers and decorated with the Polish crowned eagle.

"The prettiest building in Ankara"
Due to financial and organizational difficulties the building was not completed until 1929. Some design changes had to be made during the construction. Among other things, the west wing was modified, and Iwanicki moved the residential and office space to a different building on the premises, similar in style to the main building. The construction was carried out by the Polish construction company Warszawska Spółka Budowlana and managed by the architect Stanisław Władysław Woyciechowski. When completed, the building was considered one of the most beautiful in Ankara. As counsellor Jan Gawroński recalls: "our building radiated its old-fashioned elegance between the ugly but modern building of the Soviet embassy and a number of no less ugly eyesores built quickly by the Germans".

In July 1930 the mission was raised to embassy status. The building is surrounded by extensive green areas. In the adjacent garden there is, among others, a bust of Adam Mickiewicz made in 1909 by the sculptor Stanisław Kazimierz Ostrowski. At the end of the 1950s some of the embassy grounds were handed over for the purpose of extending the main street of Ankara. In the following years, the embassy gave up another part of the grounds for the use of the city - it is where the Swan Park (Kuğulu Park) is now located. Since 2000, the name of the street along the north border of the Polish Embassy grounds has been "Poland".

Architect Karol Iwanicki
Karol Iwanicki (1870-1940), born in Tahańcza in the then Kiev Province, was a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Lviv Polytechnic. He is known as the designer of numerous public buildings (including the Cadet Corps building in Sumy and the bank building in Rivne), as well as mansions and manor houses in Ukraine. He wrote popular construction handbooks, the most important of which was Rural Construction, published in 1917.

Designing the Polish Embassy in Ankara was not the only instance when Karol Ivanicki cooperated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the subsequent years the architect also carried out the remodeling of the General Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Berlin and made designs for the consulates in Königsberg and Dyneburg. He also took part in selecting the buildings to be purchased for the embassies in Bucharest, Vienna and The Hague and for the consulate in Lille. Iwanicki was also active in the architectural community of Warsaw: between 1926 and 1929, as Head of the Department of Architecture of the Warsaw Province, he carried out as many as 62 projects.