Ogród Zakładu Narodowego im. Ossolińskich

The garden at the Ossolineum is defined by the high, weathered stone walls that isolate it from the noise of the city streets. This quiet enclosure sits behind a massive Baroque building that once housed a monastery. In eighteen seventeen, Jozef Maksymilian Ossolinski established his library here to preserve Polish culture while the country was partitioned and erased from maps. He brought thousands of manuscripts and rare books from Vienna to this exact spot to keep a national identity alive during a century of occupation.