The Cultural Landscape of Royal Hunting Gardens from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century in Białowieża Primeval Forest

Abstract

Since the Middle Ages, the vast forests of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania served as the hunting areas of Lithuanian rulers. Grand Dukes frequently moved with their entourage between forest manors, supplying the court with venison. One of the fundamentals of the Lithuanian code of laws was the protection of big game and Grand Duke’s forests, which became royal forests after the union between Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1385. A special type of service people, osoczniks, were responsible for guarding forests and helping during royal hunts. Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF) is an example of such forest, in which the long-lasting tradition of royal hunts and conservation from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries has led to creation of a specific cultural landscape of a royal hunting garden (ogrody do polowań). Such gardens were large parts of the forest (5–10 km²) surrounded by a wooden fence, incorporating different forest habitats with a part of a stream or small river. Big game (European bison, moose, red and roe deer and wild boar) were driven and closed inside ogrody before each royal hunt. Although the techniques of the hunt changed in time, the original idea of hunting garden persisted until the last royal hunt in BPF in 1784, when at least two such areas were present there. The long-lasting maintenance of a fenced area with an artificially created glade and bower inside the forest created a specific cultural landscape, which started to decline only after the political fall of Poland in 1795. One of the hunting gardens (Kletna) has disappeared since then, but the other (Teremiska) served as a Russian game park in the nineteenth century. Since 1929, a part of it was incorporated into the Polish breeding reserve for European bison.