After six years of restoration works, the Sapieha Palace in Vilnius is to be opened to the public as an art space.
The impressive palace in the Antakalnis neighbourhood in Vilnius, adjoining a park by the same name, was constructed in the late seventeenth century as a country residence for Jan Kazimierz Sapieha, a hetman and military commander of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
These were the days of the Sapieha Palace’s grandeur. They ended after most of the Grand Duchy and Vilnius were annexed by the Russian Empire. In 1809, the palace was acquired by the Russian government and converted into a military hospital and soldiers’ quarters.
In the twentieth century, the palace changed hands several times, served as a hospital and eventually fell into disrepair. Six years ago, it was handed over to the Contemporary Art Centre.
Its director says the centre will seek to combine contemporary art and history.
“Of course, we are first envisaging exhibitions of contemporary art, but not just exhibitions, events, concerts, but we’re also talking about contemporary dance, even circus, because it has this great hall,” says Contemporary Art Centre director Kęstutis Kuizinas. “There are not that many buildings in Lithuania where the ceiling height is 10 metres.”
Evaldas Purlys, who led the architectural research and restoration of the building, says that the most important thing was to preserve the palace’s authentic architecture, not to alter its interior spaces, the building plan, the façade.
“It was more about exposing, about leaving what is most important, what has survived from the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, and covering up what came later,” he says.
The restorers uncovered old frescoes. Two of them date back to the time of the Sapieha family, the 18th century.
“We can trace the arrival of certain fashions and orientalist motifs to Lithuania, which is why we see in the frescoes, for example, people dressed in Muslim headgear, and even parrots, which were undoubtedly an exotic sight in Lithuania at the time,” says Kuizinas.
Although the palace is to be opened to the public in spring, restoration and research will continue.
“The decoration of the palace during the Baroque period was contributed by craftsmen who were very important to us in Lithuania, such as Ferdiani, Paloni, and Petro Perti,” says Laura Misiūnaitė, the education programmes curator. “People who worked in other churches, monasteries, other mansions and palaces in Vilnius, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in Poland.”
The Sapieha Palace will open to the public on April 12. Between February 16 and March 11 the Contemporary Art Centre is organising tours of the building.
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