EN
In the memory ofJozef Pius Dziekoński (1844-1927) upon the 150th Anniversary of His Birth The first church in nineteenth-century Warsaw was raised in order to commemorate the enthronement of Alexander I (1777-1825), the Emperor of Russia who at the Congress of Vienna established the Kingdom of Poland and restored a vestige of Polish independence, lost in 1795. The designer of the building was Christian Peter Aigner (1756-1841). Commonly-held opinion claimed that the artist patterned himself on the Roman Pantheon. A significant departure from the original was the reduction of the span of the copula in relation to the diameter of the corps, and the location of the former on a tambour which provided additional light to the interior. The Warsaw rotunda was erected in the years 1818-1826 (fig. 1 — design; fig. 2-5 — inventories from 1883). In 1883 a competition was announced for the extension of the edifice. The first prize was granted to Jozef Dziekoński (1844-1927) who was capable of attaining a satisfactory compromise in the relations between the spatial and utilitarian program albeit at the price of distinct compositional shortcomings (fig. 7-8 — competition project). The work, inititated in 1886, was divided into two stages: the hall corps preceding the rotunda was completed up to 1889, and the whole undertaking was finished in 1894. Extant fragments of the original rotunda included parts of the walls and the old vault, discernible only in the interior. The overall appearance of the transformed building brought to mind certain similarities with the Venetian Santa Maria del Carigniano and the del Redentore. The copula, added above the rotunda, inevitably recalled the Venetian basilica. Unfortunately, it was merely a wooden imitation, covered with slate, and with ribs profiled out of copper sheet (fig. 6; 9-15 — realization project). In 1944 the St. Alexander church became the target of air raids which left behind fragments of walls and the remains of one of the towers. The general outline of the rotunda reappeared following reconstruction, but not a single trace of Dziekohski’s project was retained.