Temple of the Sibyl

The Temple of the Sibyl (in Polish, Świątynia Sybilli) is a colonnaded round monopteral temple-like structure at Puławy, Poland, built at the turn of the 19th century as a museum by Izabela Czartoryska.

The structure was modeled after the similar monopteral "Temple of Vesta" at Tivoli, Italy, the site of the Tiburtine Sibyl, which was well known throughout Europe in engravings.

Izabela Czartoryska's son Adam Jerzy Czartoryski evacuated surviving collections to Paris, France, where he housed them at the Hôtel Lambert.

In his one-and-a-half-page micro-story, Prus identifies human societies with molds that, over the ages, blindly and impassively contest the surface of the globe.

[1] In 1869, then-22-year-old Bolesław Prus had briefly studied at the Agricultural and Forestry Institute that had been established on the old Czartoryski estate at Puławy.