Residential Rzeszów. The city in the eyes of the Lubomirski government

Residential Rzeszów. The city in the eyes of the Lubomirski government

In 1638, as a result of his marriage to Konstancja, the younger daughter of Mikołaj Spytek Ligęza, Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, one of the most powerful magnates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, became the owner of Rzeszów. It was he who contributed to the establishment of the third Piarist college in Poland, an educational institution educating both noble and middle-class youth with a high level of education. Suffice it to mention that later one of the professors here was Stanisław Konarski, a prominent representative of the Polish Enlightenment and one of the creators of the educational reform during the times of Stanisław August Poniatowski.

However, it was Hieronim Augustyn Lubomirski, the youngest son of Jerzy Sebastian, who decided to settle in Rzeszów and make the city his representative headquarters. This, in turn, required serious investments. Architects from Italy, Germany and the Netherlands came to Rzeszów and gave the city a new baroque architectural look. The famous Wiedemann plan of 1762 is a testimony to the Lubomirski family's splendor and the scale of changes that took place in the city thanks to them. It was thanks to the Lubomirski family's generous foundations and successful implementations, among others. Tylman of Gameren, John the Baptist Bellotti and Charles Henryk Wiedemann, Rzeszów, next to Warsaw, became one of the main centers of culture and architecture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during Saxon times.