Palace Park

The Palace Park was founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, around the hunting palace of the Tsars of Russia erected between 1889 and 1894. The Park covers some 50 ha, though the Palace it once surrounded burnt down in 1944 (except for the so-called “Kitchen Gate”). Buildings auxiliary to the Palace itself did survive, notably the ones that formerly housed the Board, the Marshal, the Tsar’s Jaegers and the chauffeurs, as well as the Bath House. Where the Palace proper once stood we now find the Park Directorate, Nature and Forest Museum and EMC Guest Rooms. The Palace Park was initially landscaped in the English style by Walery Kronenberg. Nearly 90 of the c. 200 tree and shrub species planted at the outset still persist. The Park also boasts Białowieża’s oldest building, a wooden manor house erected in 1845 for the Governor of Grodno (now serving as the BNP Nature Education Centre). The embankment separating the two Park lakes in turn features a sandstone obelisk (Białowieża’s oldest monument), recalling a hunting expedition mounted here in 1752 by Polish King (and Elector of Saxony) Augustus III. The Palace Mound also features a group of pedunculate oaks now more than 250 years old. Today’s Palace Park enjoys protection for the way it represents a historical park layout.