US president to attend Poland’s 25 years of freedom celebrations

President Obama Meets with European Leaders

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2014/06/03/president-obama-meets-european-leaders

The President’s 2014 Trip to Europe

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/europe-trip-june-2014?utm_source=snapshot&utm_medium=email&utm_content=632014-topper

President Obama is traveling to Poland, Belgium, and France, June 3-6, 2014. While in Warsaw, the President will hold bilateral meetings and join other world leaders in commemorating the Polish Freedom Day, marking the 25th anniversary of Poland’s emergence from Communism. From Poland, the President will travel to Brussels for the G-7 Leaders’ Summit, and will then continue on to France to participate in commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

Putin takes center stage in Obama’s Europe trip

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/06/02/365232/putin-at-center-of-obamas-europe-trip/

President Barack Obama will travel to Europe Monday night to reassure NATO allies of US support in Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, with President Vladimir Putin expected to overshadow his trip.

Media reports say Obama is to use his speeches and meetings with Washington’s European allies to stress that if the Russian leader does not change his current stance towards the crisis in Ukraine, Moscow will face more economic sanctions.

“Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama don’t plan to meet this week, although the Russian leader will never be far from Mr. Obama’s thoughts or his movements,” reported The Washington Times.

Starting Tuesday in Poland, Obama’s four-day trip to Europe will also involve visits to Belgium and France. The US president also plans his first meeting with Ukraine’s president-elect Petro Poroshenko.

In Belgium, Obama will have a meeting with G7 leaders, which was formerly known as the Group of Eight before Russia was removed over the crisis in Ukraine. The meeting was originally scheduled to be held in Russia.

Obama is to arrive in Paris on Thursday night for a private dinner with his French counterpart Francois Hollande who also has a dinner date on Thursday night with Putin.

Obama administration officials said the three leaders will not be dining together. “President Hollande may be dining more than once,” said White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

However, Obama and Putin will attend a ceremony on Friday marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, the allied landings in France during World War II.

“Clearly they’ll be in the same place. They’ll certainly have cause to interact,” said Rhodes.

Tensions between Washington and Russia have been mounting over the crisis in Ukraine, especially following a referendum in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in which people overwhelmingly voted to join the Russian Federation.

Following the referendum, the US imposed sanctions against some Russian individuals and entities, including SMP Bank and Bank Rossiya. However, despite repeated threats, Washington has not yet announced any sanctions that would target key sectors of the Russian economy.

Moscow has also imposed sanctions on a number of US officials including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, and Sen. John McCain. 

US president to attend Poland’s 25 years of freedom celebrations

http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/28452/news

Poland's capital city of Warsaw is getting ready for the arrival of American President Barrack Obama and a number of other leaders of Central and Eastern Europe for the celebrations of the 25 anniversary of the first partly democratic elections after World War II.

President Obama will start his two-day visit to Poland on Tuesday, during which he will meet with President Bronislaw Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Obama will be accompanied by US Secretary of State John Kerry

After the official welcome at Warsaw's Okecie Airport on Tuesday morning the two presidents will meet with Polish and American pilots of F-16 aircraft, according to the Polish president's website.

According to Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, the U.S.-Polish alliance is crucial for transatlantic relations and forms the foundation of U.S. support not only for the Poles but also other allies from Eastern Europe.

The U.S. president will meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday afternoon.

At 3 p.m. Presidents Komorowski and Obama will host a meeting with the presidents of Central and Eastern European countries.

The highlight of President Obama's Warsaw visit will be an address to the Polish nation to be delivered on Wednesday as part of the the anniversary celebrations of Poland's peaceful transition from a communist state to a parliamentary democracy.

Also on Wednesday, Obama is due to meet with Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko.

Besides military, economic, scientific and technological bilateral cooperation and the forthcoming NATO summit in Wales, Presidents Komorowski and Obama will discuss the U.S. presence in Central Europe, as well as the situation in Ukraine, according to the presidential aide Roman Kuzniar.

Royal Palace in Warsaw

https://www.google.hr/search?q=royal+palace+in+warsaw&client=opera&hs=qWI&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rQWNU6WJA7Ou7Ab4loCwDw&ved=0CDEQsAQ&biw=1440&bih=792

Warsaw's Glorious Royal Castle

An Artistic Legacy of Poland’s Last King

http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/Zamek/castle.html

The origins of Warsaw's Royal Castle or Zamek, which stands of the Vistula escarpment at the southern end of the Old Town, go back to the Mazovian Prince, Bolesław II at the turn of the 13th century. Later, King Zygmunt August held meetings of the Polish parliament there. In 1569, after the Union of Poland and Lithuania, Warsaw, conveniently equidistant from Krakow and Vilno, the two capitals, became the permanent location for such meetings which took place at the Zamek. It was also at the Zamek in 1573 that the Assembly of Warsaw enacted Poland's charter of religious freedom which proclaimed "everyone is free to worship according to his conscience's faith." This was a great achievement for though today Poland is overwhelmingly Catholic, in those times the Catholic faith was professed by less than half of the inhabitants and the charter spared Poland the horrors of the religious wars that engulfed much of Europe during the counter-reformation.

In 1611 King Zygmunt III Vaza took up residence in the Zamek, moved his court it and rendering Warsaw the de facto capital of the Polish Commonwealth. To accommodate the needed government offices he added three wings to the building, enclosing thereby a pentagonal courtyard that defines the Zamek. He surmounted the west wing entrance with a clock tower. Known thereafter as the Zygmunt Tower, it was destined to become the most easily recognizable motif of the Zamek.

His son and successor, Władysław IV, erected a monument in front of the Castle to commemorate his father. It's a column surmounted by the figure of Zygmunt Ill supporting, with one hand, a large cross and holding a sword in the other. The Zygmunt Column, one of the first secular statues in Europe, graces the Castle Square to this day.

Entering the Great Courtyard one comes face to face with a gothic wail of the original Mazovian Castle. Next to it is an inner tower build by Władysław IV. It's called the Władysławowska Tower.

The word Zamek means Castle in Polish, but the Warsaw Zamek, whatever its origins, is not a defensive structure as the term Castle might suggests, rather it is a palace. It is a splendid palace, an icon of Polish nationalism, a symbol of its sovereignty. The decorations of the interior of the Zamek celebrate the history of the nation and the state, the achievements of its culture and the deeds of valor of its knighthood. For this the nation can thank primarily one man, Poland's last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski. The Zamek, like much of Poland, had been devastated during the Swedish wars. Stanisław August undertook a carefully planned restoration which was both spectacular and frequently much ahead of it time. It more than returned the Zamek to its former splendors. It sought to proclaim the ideal of a legitimate royal rule in a peaceful setting. It veered away from the prevailing Baroque and Rococo style and introduced Neoclassicism to Poland.

Who was Stanisław August Poniatowski, and how did he come to have the wisdom and artistic taste necessary to achieve this, and why was he Poland's last king?

Born in 1732, he was the son of a distinguished and successful Polish general and a doting mother, herself a daughter of Polish magnates, a woman of the enlightenment and high rectitude. She exposed him to a wealth of philosophical concepts and ideas when he was yet young. At 18 he was sent abroad and during the next eight years visited Saxony, Prussia, Austria, France, the Netherlands, and England. He lived for periods of time in Dresden, Berlin, Paris and London. While in Paris, he had the opportunity to see the workings of the court at Versailles, note its manners, admire its taste. His visit to England imbued him with an admiration for that country's political system and social structure.

In 1757 he was sent to St. Petersburg as a plenipotentiary by the Familia, the Czartoryski-led faction of the Polish Magnates. There he had a torrid love affair with the Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna. Five years later, her husband became Tzar Peter III and shortly, still during 1762, Catherine, having engineered a coup d'etat, became herself the sovereign destined to be called the Great.

The following year, August III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland died. Thereupon Catherine promised to help Stanisław become the elected King of Poland. Nor was this an idle boast. Poland, then one of the largest countries of Europe and in the minds of its people a sovereign state, was in fact, a protectorate, a vassal state of Russia. It had been so since 1717. The Russian sovereign and his army bad become the guarantor of the Polish nobility's "Golden Freedoms" and of a law the fixed the Polish Army at 24,000 men. And so on September 7, 1764 in a field in Wola, just outside Warsaw, Stanisław was elected King of Poland in a colorful ceremony immortalized in a painting by Bellotto. Although the painting portrays over 7000 persons, it fails to show the gleam of the bayonets of the Russian army that surrounded the field and assured an uncontested election. Even so, the new sovereign was a popular one. Intelligent, cultured and cosmopolitan he was, at last, a Pole. That was welcome for his recent royal predecessors had been all of foreign stock.

Stanisław August started the restoration of the Zamek by completely rebuilding the Royal Apartments and the Grand Staircase which led to them. Located in the south wing of the Zamek, its use is now reserved for ceremonial occasions. The King's architect at the start of this period was Jakub Fontana (1710-1773). His design of the Grand Staircase is resplendent in its Classical style. His father Józef bad also been a distinguished Warsaw architect. Jakub studied in Italy and Paris and his versatile style evolved from late Baroque and Rococo into Classicism. The first chamber of the Royal Apartments is the Guard Room (18) also designed by Fontana. Here on benches along the walls sat the soldiers of the Royal Mounted Guard protecting the King. The room in a classical style and rather austere but if one looks over the lintels of the four doors one finds charming supraportas .representing children with military accessories, the work of Jan Chryzostom Redler.

The adjacent Marble Chamber (12), paneled in many varieties and colors of marble during the reign of Władysław IV, was now embellished by Fontana with Bacciarelli's very fine portraits of 22 Polish Kings and the figures of Justice and Peace, sculpted by Andrzej Le Brun. The room is dominated by a full length portrait of Stanisław August in his coronation robes.

Finally one comes to the Great Hall (10), or Hall of the Columns. The most august of the Zamek's locations, where Court and State ceremony met: the center of Royal Power. It allowed a forceful demonstration of the idea of authority: through the hall's size, the rich materials employed and the fine works of art displayed. The King sought plans for it from a variety of architects. Eventually a plan by Merlini was adopted as a starting point but its final form is attributable to Kamsetzer. Broad mirrors, statues in deep niches, plain columns and round upper level windows appeared all to increase the size of the Hall. Beyond the Great Hall is the Council Room (15) where the Continuous Council met, and beyond it still the theater or concert hail (16) still so used today.

The Neoclassical Throne Room (13) is dominated by its rich gilding and the red velvet the King ordered be used on the throne and walls. The original design for the room and for the carving of the moldings were those of Victor Louis (1731-1800), one of the founders of French Neoclassicism. The Throne itself was designed by Kamsetzer and made by Polish artisans.

To the side of the Throne Room is the small Chamber of the European Monarchs (14). Here hang portraits of George III, Pope Pius VI, Joseph II of Austria, Louis XVI, Gustav III of Sweden, Frederick II of Prussia, and Catherine II of Russia. The paintings of the monarchs are first class; that of George III, for instance, is by Gainsbourough. The whole chamber is an extraordinary work of art devoted by the King to monarchs who were either hostile or indifferent to his country and His reign. The King must have often pondered how to buttress Poland's sovereignty by gaining an advantage over them on the vast chessboard that was this part of Europe in the 18th century.