Showing 1-14 of 14 results
-
Barbican
Heading north out of the Old Town along Ul Nowomiejska you'll soon see the redbrick Barbican, a semicircular defensive tower topped with a decorative Renaissance parapet. It was partially dismantled in the 19th century, but reconstructed after WWII, and is now a popular spot for buskers and art sellers.
-
Castle Square
A natural spot from which to start exploring the Old Town is triangular Castle Square. Attracting snap-happy tourists by the hundreds each day is the square's centrepiece, the Sigismund III Vasa Column (Kolumna Zygmunta III Wazy; M0560).
-
Ghetto Heroes Monument
About 200m north of Pawiak Prison Museum, on the corner of ul Anielewicza and ul Zamenhofa, is a tree-lined park, which in summer is dotted with sunbathers. It's an incongruously peaceful setting for the Ghetto Heroes Monument, a memorial to the thousands who lost their lives in the ill-fated Ghetto Uprising of 1943. The grey stone tower is built of Swedish granite, originally imported by the Nazis to build their own victory monument.
-
Monument to Mordechaj Anielewicz
From the Ghetto Heroes Monument head north along ul Zamenhofa, past a garden with a little mound topped by a simple limestone block, a Monument to Mordechaj Anielewicz, leader of the Ghetto Uprising, who perished in a bunker on this site in 1943.
-
Monument to Nicolaus Copernicus
The contemplative figure sitting on a plinth south of Warsaw University is a Monument to Nicolaus Copernicus, the great Polish astronomer.
-
-
Monument to the Warsaw Uprising
Directly opposite the Polish Army Field Cathedral stands one of Warsaw's most important landmarks, the Monument to the Warsaw Uprising. This bronze tableau depicts Armia Krajowa (AK; Home Army) fighters emerging ghostlike from the shattered brickwork of their ruined city, while others descend through a manhole into the network of sewers. The monument was unveiled on 1 August 1989, the 45th anniversary of the uprising.
-
New Town
The New Town is a bit of a misnomer, considering it was founded at the end of the 14th century and since 1408 has commanded its own jurisdiction and administration. It exudes similar architectural styles to those found in the Old Town, but lacks any defensive walls, probably due to the fact that historically it was inhabited by poor folk. Ul Freta is the New Town's main street, leading north from the Barbican towards New Town Sq (Rynek Nowego Miasta).
-
Old Town
The Old Town was rebuilt from the foundations up because after the war it was nothing but a heap of rubble. The monumental reconstruction, which took place between 1949 and 1963, aimed at restoring the appearance of the town in its best times, the 17th and 18th centuries. Every authentic architectural fragment found among the ruins was incorporated in the restoration.
-
Old Town Square
The partially walled Old Town (Stare Miasto) is centred on Old Town Square, which, for those with an eye for historical buildings, is the loveliest in Warsaw. It's lined with tall houses exhibiting a fine blend of Renaissance and Baroque with Gothic and neoclassical elements - aside from the façades at Nos 34 and 36, all were reconstructed after WWII. An 1855 statue of the Mermaid (Syrena), the symbol of Warsaw, occupies the square's central position, the site of the city's original town hall demolished in 1817.
-
Palace of Culture & Science
The open expanses and tall buildings bounded by ul Marszałkowska, Al Jerozolimskie, ul Jana Pawła II and Al Solidarności collectively constitute Warsaw's financial zone. Its dominating feature (and that of the city) is the Palace of Culture & Science , which rises high above the newly built skyscrapers that have begun to mark this area in the past 10 years.
-
Advertisement
-
Plac Bankowy
Like most of Warsaw's squares, Plac Bankowy is too big and busy to be appealing. It was once the financial district of 19th-century Warsaw, but the only reminder of this is spread along the western side of the square; here you'll see the imposing City Hall (Ratusz; M0570) and the former stock exchange and Bank of Poland building, both grand neoclassical buildings designed by Antonio Corazzi in the 1820s. The eastern side of the square was redeveloped after WWII and is now dominated by a blue skyscraper built on the site of a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis. The story goes that a local rabbi placed a curse on the site and, sure enough, the skyscraper was dogged by problems and took 30 years to build.
-
Plac Grzybowski
Plac Grzybowski is the centrepiece of Warsaw's current Jewish community. Here, behind the Teatr Żydowski (Jewish Theatre; ) is the Nożyk Synagogue, the city's only synagogue to survive WWII.
-
Sigismund III Vasa Column
A natural spot from which to start exploring the Old Town is triangular Castle Square (Plac Zamkowy). Attracting snap-happy tourists by the hundreds each day is the square's centrepiece, the Sigismund III Vasa Column. This lofty 22m-high monument to the king who moved the capital from Kraków to Warsaw was erected by the king's son in 1644 and is Poland's second-oldest secular monument (after Gdańsk's Neptune). It was knocked down during WWII, but the statue survived and was placed on a new column four years after the war. The original, shrapnel-scarred granite column now lies along the south wall of the Royal Castle.
-
Umschlagplatz Monument
The Umschlagplatz Monument marks the site of the umschlagplatz (literally, 'taking-away place'), the railway terminus from which Warsaw's Jews were transported to Treblinka. The rectangle monument's marble walls are carved with more than 3000 Jewish forenames, from Aba to Zygmunt, and the stark message: 'Along this path of suffering and death over 300,000 Jews were driven in 1942-43 from the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination camps'.
-
Showing 1-14 of 14 results
