Gisleni. A Roman Architect in Poland

Drawings by the architect who came to Warsaw as a lute player and ended up designing royal interiors and city churches. Nearly thirty large-format sheets have travelled from the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and hang in the Castle until 13 December 2026.

The Royal Castle in Warsaw on the exhibition:

He arrived in Poland as a musician and went on to make his mark on its history as an architect to the kings. For over three decades, Giovanni Battista Gisleni shaped the visual splendor of the Vasa court, designing both royal residences and their exquisite interiors. Nearly thirty of his drawings, brought from Milan, are presented in the first such comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in Poland.

From Music to Architecture

Born in Rome in 1600, Giovanni Battista Gisleni arrived in Poland thirty years later and entered the service of King Sigismund III Vasa as a musician playing the theorbo - a bass member of the lute family. His architectural talent was soon recognized, however. At the height of his career, he designed and modernized some of the capital’s most important buildings, including royal residences and monumental churches. He was also responsible for the visual settings of court ceremonies - weddings, coronations, and funerals.

Rome on the Vistula

Gisleni was strongly influenced by the architecture of his native Rome, to which he returned several times during his years in Poland. He was well versed in classical works on architectural theory, including the treatises of Vitruvius, Palladio, and Serlio, while also closely following the latest trends. In Gisleni’s designs, mathematical precision is combined with a free, confident hand, while Christian symbolism is interwoven with classical motifs.

What You’ll See

The exhibition features nearly thirty large-format drawings from the Castello Sforzesco collection in Milan. You will see designs for churches and residences in Warsaw, royal interiors, altars, and tombs, as well as remarkable funerary decorations filled with skeletons, urns, hourglasses, and classical motifs. The works on display also include a design for a royal bedroom featuring figures of Venus and Mars, as well as a plan for the architect’s own house in Rome - complete with a small garden and a chicken run.

What to expect

This is a show on paper: nearly thirty large-format drawings, all of them from the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. No models, no screens - the museum announces nothing of the kind. If you enjoy reading a plan and following a line, there is more here than in many painting shows. If you came to see finished buildings, you will leave disappointed: many of Gisleni’s designs were never carried out, and very little of what he did build has survived.

Four things worth hunting for, all of them named by the museum:

• A design for a royal bedroom with figures of Venus and Mars. The king’s private room laid out like a mythological stage set.
• A plan for the architect’s own house in Rome, complete with a small garden and a chicken run. A rare glimpse of how a court designer housed himself.
• Funerary decorations filled with skeletons, urns, hourglasses and classical motifs. Gisleni staged royal funerals, and this is the most theatrical part of his output.
• Designs for Warsaw churches and residences, plus altars and tombs - in effect a plan of a Warsaw that largely stayed on paper.

The museum names no curator and does not say which room the show occupies. That second gap matters on free Wednesdays - see below.

Context

Giovanni Battista Gisleni was born in Rome in 1600 and died there on 3 May 1672. He arrived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth around 1630 and stayed for roughly a quarter of a century, with a brief return in 1665-66, serving three kings of the Vasa dynasty: Sigismund III, Władysław IV and John II Casimir. Throughout that time he was simultaneously a musician in the royal chapel, a stage designer for court spectacles and an architect. In the 17th century there was no contradiction in that, and playing the lute was often a steadier income than building.

He has a direct connection to this building. The Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów places him among those who worked on the modernisation of the Royal Castle after the royal wedding of 1637, credits him with the decoration of the Marble Cabinet and probably with the portals of the Ambassadors’ Staircase. His surviving or documented works include the church of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Lviv (1642), the church of the Discalced Carmelites in Warsaw (1652), the high altar of Wawel Cathedral funded by Bishop Piotr Gembicki (around 1650) and that bishop’s tomb.

His drawings are now scattered across Europe: 116 designs went to Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, some to the print room in Dresden, some to Milan - and it is the Milan holding that has come to Warsaw. For himself, Gisleni designed a tomb in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome: a memento mori with a carved skeleton, one of the best-known monuments of its kind in the city. The skeletons in this exhibition come from the same imagination.

Tickets and time

• Dates: the exhibition opened on 11 September and runs until 13 December 2026.
• Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-18:00, last entry at 17:00. The Castle is closed on Mondays. These are the hours for the Castle’s main routes (the Museum Route, the Royal Route and the Kubicki Arcades); the Tin-Roofed Palace keeps its own schedule.
• Prices depend on the route: the Royal Route and the Museum Route are 60 PLN regular and 45 PLN reduced (audio guide included), the Castle Route (both together) 95 PLN and 75 PLN, the Palace Route 30 PLN and 20 PLN, the Golden Route 110 PLN and 90 PLN. Visitors aged 7 to 26 who are citizens of the EU, EFTA or Switzerland pay 1 PLN; children under 7 enter free on a pass collected at the ticket office.
• Is there a separate ticket? The museum does not announce one. The exhibition is not listed against any route on the ticket page, and on 18 September 2026 the Castle’s own booking system offered tickets only for a different temporary show. If you are coming for Gisleni alone, ask at the ticket office before you buy a route ticket.
• Does the free Wednesday cover it? The museum spells out what the free Wednesday covers: the Tin-Roofed Palace and a special route inside the Castle - the Royal Apartments from the Oval Gallery to the Crown Horse Guards Chamber, plus the Lanckoroński Gallery. Temporary exhibitions are not in that list, and since the museum does not say where Gisleni hangs, the question cannot be settled from the website. Wednesday passes are free but issued at the ticket office on the day, in limited numbers - arrive before 10:00.
• How long: 30-40 minutes for the drawings alone. Add roughly 60 minutes for the Royal Route, 90 for the Museum Route or 150 for the Castle Route if you are coming in on a sightseeing ticket.
• Roof works. Repairs to the Castle roof run in stages from July to December 2026. The museum states that the Castle stays open throughout and that all exhibitions, events and visitor routes run as planned.
• English on site: the museum publishes its own English page for this exhibition, and the audio guide for the Royal, Museum and Castle Routes is available in English. The museum does not say whether the captions beside the drawings are bilingual.

Who it is for: anyone interested in 17th-century architecture, architectural drawing, or the Warsaw that never got built. It also pays off if you are already touring the Castle and want to see who designed its interiors. If you want something for children or a piece of spectacle, pick The Secret Chambers of the People’s Authorities in the same building from October.

What the press says

As of 18 September 2026 no review had appeared. Beyond the museum’s own pages, the show has one mention, in Polish:

• SZUM (31.08.2026, editorial team): the art magazine put Gisleni in its round-up of the most interesting autumn exhibitions, noting that most of the designs on show come from Milan collections and are reaching Poland for the first time - autumn 2026 preview

See also

• Łukasz Stokłosa. Shining - the Castle’s other running show, until 31 October 2026: contemporary painting hung among Matejko’s history canvases, so one visit covers the 17th and the 21st century.
• The Secret Chambers of the People’s Authorities - 2 October 2026 to 17 January 2027: the luxury apartments fitted out in the rebuilt Castle for the communist government’s foreign guests. From October you can see both shows on the same day.
• The Royal Castle in Warsaw - the Royal Apartments, the Parliamentary Chambers and the Lanckoroński Gallery, the interiors Gisleni and his successors worked on. There you see the result; in the exhibition, the intention.
• The Sobieskis and the Stuarts - The Splendour and Spectre of the Crown - Wilanów Palace, until 13 December 2026: the same century and the same closing day, seen from the side of the court and its politics.

Museum profile: The Royal Castle in Warsaw.