White Palace in Zatrocze recovered

The twentieth-century White Palace in Zatrocze fascinates anew not only with its exterior and renewed park but also with the interior which, thanks to the exhibition ‘Recovered House’, is no longer empty. Thanks to the Polish museum institutions’ support the palace chambers have been decorated with stylish furniture and every room has regained the appearance in accordance with its original purpose. Małgorzata Omilanowska, Under-secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland and Romas Jarockis, Under-secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture in Lithuania came at the opening ceremony of the new exhibition. With this event the long-lasting renovation to the palace has come to an end. Now, guests visiting Zatrocze will be able to appreciate the results of the Polish-Lithuanian cooperation.

The sources for the reconstruction of the White Palace of the Tyszkiewicz family in Zatrocze came from Poland, Lithuania and the European Union’s funds. Mr. Gintaras Abaravičius, director of the Trakai Historical National Park, told in the interview for ‘Wilnoteka’ that significant part of the funds for the palace’s reconstruction came from the European Union.

The Tyszkiewicz family’s palace’s restoration was a joint project of Poland and Lithuania. As Mrs. Małgorzata Omilanowska said, Poland has a considerable experience when it comes to renovations to the objects of cultural heritage on the Recovered Territories. Such projects  were carried out in cooperation with Germany. Thus during the joint work of restoration  of the 20^th century palace in Zatrocze, Poland could take advantage of its experience and share it with Lithuania.

Such historic-cultural projects as the restoration of the palace in Zatrocze remind us of the Polish and Lithuanian mutual history and at the same time they build a bridge between the two neighbouring countries. ‘Culture always unites. Thanks God there are artists. We don’t need to use culture as an ‘icebreaker’ to say that our relations are or will be better, because they are good indeed. However, an extremely important thing is that we are able to join forces in order to achieve more. The whole trick here was not only to restore the walls, repair the roof or build new paths in the park but mainly to find out what it looked like in the past and reconstruct it. We have managed to do it thanks to the joint efforts, since all the plans and information about this building are in Warsaw in the National Library of Poland.  Thanks to joined forces the palace has been restored’ – said to ‘Wilnoteka’ Jarosław Czubiński, Polish Ambassador in the Republic of Lithuania. During the opening ceremony in Zatrocze two persons were given medals of merits for preserving Polish cultural heritage by Mrs. M. Omilanowska. Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis was awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland Bogdan Zdrojewski to Gintaras Abaravičius, director of the Trakai Historical National Park and to Raisa Kobecka, custodian of the reconstruction of Zatrocze.

The White Palace in Zatrocze was built at the turn of the 19^th and  the 20^th century in a neoclassical style. The owner and initiator of the palace’s building was the Tyszkiewicz family. The palace in Zatrocze was designed by the Polish architect, one of the most famous representatives of the Polish eclecticism, Józef Huss. The infrastructure and landscape’s elements of the 70-hectare peninsula the palace is situated on, were designed by the French landscape architect, Édouard François André.

Today the palace belongs to the Trakai Historical National Park. Lithuania undertook the project of renovation to the White Palace in 1997. Since 2008 The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland has been co-financing  the renovation works at the Tyszkiewicz’s palce in Zatrocze. Seven Polish museums took part in the restoration of  the palace, including Palace Museum in Wilanów, and Polish restorers were working at the palace’s chambers’ reconstruction. Polish museums, including Palace Museum in Wilanów and in Łańcut and the National Museums in Warsaw and in Cracow have lent their exhibits to the White Palace.

Source: http://www.wilnoteka.lt/pl/tresc/odzyskany-bialy-palac-w-zatroczu

Tłumaczenie by Elżbieta Szafarz w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Elżbieta Szafarz within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.