Załuski's Library

Załuski Library
Załuski Library's original home: now "House of the Kings" (dom Pod Królami), Warsaw
General information
Architectural style	Rococo
Town or city	Warsaw
Country	Poland
Construction started	1621
Completed	1624
Demolished	After 1939
Client	Józef Andrzej Załuski, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski
Design and construction
Architect	Francesco Antonio Melana (1736-1745)

The Załuski Library (Polish: Biblioteka Załuskich, Latin: Bibliotheca Zalusciana) was built in Warsaw in 1747–1795 by Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, both Roman Catholic bishops. The library was the first Polish public library, the largest library in Poland, and one of the earliest public libraries in Europe.

After the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), Russian troops, acting on orders from Czarina Catherine II, seized the library's holdings and transported them to her personal collection at Saint Petersburg, where a year later it formed the cornerstone of the newly founded Imperial Public Library.

In the 1920s the government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic returned some of the former Załuski Library holdings to the recently established Second Polish Republic thanks to the Treaty of Riga. These holdings were deliberately destroyed by German troops during the planned destruction of Warsaw in October 1944, following the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising.

The Załuski brothers' greatest passion was books. Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother Andrzej Stanisław Załuski acquired the collections of earlier Polish bibliophiles such as Jakub Zadzik, Krzysztof Opaliński, Tomasz Ujejski, Janusz Wiśniowiecki, Jerzy Mniszech and Jan III Sobieski (the latter, from his granddaughter, Maria Karolina Sobieska).