Park Oliwski & Abbot's Palace Gardens
Park Oliwski is an 11-hectare historic landscape park in Gdańsk, established by Cistercian abbots in the eighteenth century and uniting a French Baroque parterre with romantic English cascades and an exotic Palm House.
From the source
The Abbot’s Palace in Oliwa houses the Modern Art Collection and Theatre Department of the National Museum in Gdańsk. Other departments of the same branch occupy the separate NOMUS building. An associated outdoor sculpture gallery stands in Oliwa Park.
Editorial reading
Originating as the monastic gardens of the Cistercian monastery founded in 1186, Park Oliwski assumed its magnificent palatial form under Jacek Rybiński, the last Cistercian Abbot of Oliwa, who commissioned the Rococo Abbot's Palace between 1754 and 1756. Abbot Rybiński engaged garden master Kazimierz Dębiński to design a French Baroque formal garden in front of the palace. The design is anchored by the celebrated 'View of the Sea' (Droga do Wieczności / Path to Eternity)—a grand allée of clipped linden trees positioned alongside a narrow 112-metre canal that originally created an optical illusion extending to the waters of the Gulf of Gdańsk. In the late eighteenth century, German landscape gardener Jan Saltzmann transformed the southern grounds into an English landscape park inspired by Prince Franz of Anhalt-Dessau's Wörlitz grounds. Saltzmann sculpted romantic streams from the Oliwski Creek, weeping willow grottos, and picturesque cascades. Today, Park Oliwski features a historic Palm House (Palmiarnia) sheltering historic palms and exotic cacti, an authentic Japanese garden, and a quiet whisper grotto (Groty Szeptów), making it Gdańsk's most cherished green oasis.
Recommendation
Walk down the 18th-century linden allée of the Cistercian Abbots, experience the French Baroque canal, and visit the historic Palm House in Gdańsk.
Sources
The château by this garden
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