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Warszawa (Warsaw), Krakowskie Przedmieście street, Staszic Palace. The history of the Staszic Palace dates to 1620, when King of Poland Zygmunt III Vasa ordered the construction of a small Eastern Orthodox chapel, as a proper place of burial for the former tsar Vasili IV of Russia and his brother, Dmitry Shuisky, who died in Polish captivity after having been captured several years earlier during the Polish-Muscovite War (1605-1618). As the population was mostly Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, there was little need for an Orthodox chapel and in 1668 another Polish king, Jan Kazimierz, transferred the chapel to the Dominican Order, who would be caretakers of the building until 1808. In 1818 the building was purchased by Stanisław Staszic, a leader of the Polish Enlightenment, who ordered its renovation. The architect in charge was Antonio Corazzi, who designed the palace in a neoclassical style. After the renovation (1820-1823), Staszic transferred the building to the Society of Friends of Science, the first Polish scientific organization. On May 11, 1830, another landmark was added to the palace, as Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz unveiled before it a monument to Nicolaus Copernicus sculpted by Bertel Thorvaldsen. A replica of this sculpture of Copernicus was recast in bronze installed in 1973 on Chicago's lakefront along Solidarity Drive in the city's Museum Campus. The palace was damaged during the 1939 siege of Warsaw and nearly razed during the Warsaw Uprising (1944). In 1946-50 it was rebuilt in its original neoclassical form. Today it is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
source: wikipedia