A nineteenth-century bridge throught Lake Wlanowskie

Abstract

The article explores the issue of communications across Lake Wilanowskie, in connection with John III Sobieski’s decision to build a garden-surrounded palace in Wilanów (earlier called Milanów). It presents an overview of the available cartographic and iconographic sources as well as court inventories. In the 19th c. the Wilanów palace passed into the ownership of the Potocki family, whose subsequent members reshaped the gardens, extending them and redesigning in the style of  English romantic parks. Those changes resulted in establishing a park in Morysin, across Lake Wilanowskie. In order to integrate the new park with the palace complex it was necessary to provide communications through the lake. This was achieved by building a pontoon bridge. The  article discusses its location, construction and dating in the light of the available sources and then presents the results of a surface and underwater examination of the site.The examination concerned the shoreline in the area indicated by the analysis of the  sources; the historical plan was superimposed on a contemporary geodetic plan. Almost ex-actly where the western abutment was predicted to be the examination revealed a brick structure,  probably remains of the nineteenth-century bridge. Nothing was found on the opposite shore. The underwater survey was conducted with a sonic depth finder which produced a profile of the lake’s bottom, supplemented with diving in those places where the apparatus signalled anoma-lies. Direct examination was impossible since visibility did not exceed five centimetres, while wire drag could not be used because of fallen boughs sunk in the lake. Diving did not disclose any remains of the bridge.Thus, the examination revealed a fragment of the abutment on the Wilanów shore of the lake, but - intriguingly - no structures on the Morysin shore or on the bottom of the lake. It is possible that those ‘missing’ parts of the construction were destroyed during renovation works after WW II, when the lake shore was regulated, which also affected the part of the structure that was discovered.