Ruins Of 17th-Century Polish Palace Recovered From Vistula River

The palace, the Villa Regia, was carried off in pieces by invading Swedes in the 17th century, but many of the pieces were inadvertently lost in the Vistula River.

Almost 400 years ago, an invading Swedish army attacked a newly built summer palace in Warsaw. As the Swedes retreated, they took several pieces of the structure with them — but they overloaded a barge, which then sank in the Vistula River. Slowly but surely, however, those long-lost pieces are now coming to the surface.

Thanks to a decades-long archaeological project — as well as historically low water levels — archaeologists have been able to recover huge chunks of the lost royal residence. These pieces will go to the Polish History Museum, which is steadily reconstructing the palace out of the recovered parts.

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