The Presidential Palace, also known as Koniecpolskich, Lubomirskich, Radziwillow, and Namiestnikowski Palace, is the elegant classicist latest version of a building that has stood on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie site since 1643.
Over the years, it has been rebuilt and remodeled many times. For its first 175 years, the palace was the private property of several aristocratic families.
In 1791 it hosted the authors and advocates of the Constitution of May 3, 1791, of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Europe's first modern codified national constitution, and the world's second after the U.S. Constitution.

It was in 1818 that the palace began its ongoing career as a governmental structure, when it became the seat of the Viceroy of the Polish (Congress) Kingdom under Russian occupation.
Following Poland's resurrection after World War I, in 1918, the building was taken over by the newly reconstituted Polish authorities and became the seat of the Council of Ministers.
During World War II, it served the country's German occupiers as a Deutsches Haus and survived intact the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. After the war, it resumed its function as seat of the Polish Council of Ministers. Since July 1994, the palace has been the official seat of the President of the Republic of Poland replacing the smaller Belweder palace.

An equestrian statue of Prince Józef Poniatowski stands in the courtyard. It was commissioned in 1816 and was created in 1832 by sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, modelled after the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome.
Before World War II, the statue of Prince Józef stood before the Polish General Staff building (the Saxon Palace) and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier within the Palace.
Though the statue was destroyed in World War II, it was recast in 1965 from the original mold.