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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Castle,_Warsaw

The Royal Castle in Warsaw (Polish: Zamek Królewski w Warszawie) is a castle residency and was the official residence of the Polish monarchs. It is located in the Castle Square, at the entrance to the Warsaw Old Town. The personal offices of the king and the administrative offices of the Royal Court of Poland were located there from the 16th century until the Partitions of Poland.
In the first half of the 18th century, when first Augustus II the Strong and then Augustus III, of the Wettin family from Saxony, were elected to the throne of Poland, there were several attempts at fargoing reconstruction of the castle, but these came to nothing. In 1737 on the restrictions of the Polish Parliament, the Italian architect Gaetano Chiaveri designed
a new wing facing the Vistula. It was built between 1741 and 1747, under the supervision of a Polonised Italian, Antonio Solari. This was an excellent design, which harmonized extremely well with the older parts of the castle buildings. King Stanisław II August by Marcello Bacciarelli. During the reign of Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski, the last Polish monarch, from 1764 to the third partition of Poland in 1795, the Royal Castle went through a period of greatness. The allocated money from the royal budget as well as the patronage which  the king granted artists and the education and artistic taste of the ruler himself allowed for one of the most interesting reconstruction projects of the castle. Quite a few projects were carried out, which were designed by, among others, French architect Victor Louis, Johann Christian Kamsetzer or Efraim Szreger. The baroque-classical interior was carried out on the basis of Jakub Fontana's and Domenico Merlini's projects. From 1773 the floor was thoroughly refurnished and the inside was decorated (D. Merlin and J.Ch. Kamsetzer's projects), for example new royal apartments, such as The Royal Chapel,
The Knight Hall (otherwise known as The National Hall) and The Ballroom (Great Assembly Hall) were built. The successful changes made by the King that took place inside the Castle had a very characteristic Polish identity and a high artistic level. Also a new building of the Royal Library was built from scratch, running along the right wing of the Copper-Roof Palace (included in 1776 to the group of castle buildings) measuring 56 × 9 m. On 3 May 1791, the 4-year Sejm passed a constitution at The Royal Castle in Warsaw.