Built at the end of the 13th C., the castle served as residence to the Dukes of Mazovia before becoming the seat of the Royal Crown. Considerably extended in the 17th C., it was for a time the seat of Parliament. Occupied by the Tsars for more than a century, it was allocated to the President of the young Republic of Poland in 1918. The Nazis dynamited it at the time of the uprising in 1944. Its reconstruction was undertaken between 1971 and 1984, allowing its former baroque style to be reborn.