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Al Jerozolimskie
Al Jerozolimskie is a big, ugly thoroughfare that creates a physical east-west border through the city. The area to its south was ear-marked by the communists for post-WWII development, and some of the city's boldest socialist-realist architecture can be found here. Ul Marszałkowska, a broad avenue running south from near the financial district, contains the most impressive examples.
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Former Jewish Ghetto
Before WWII, much of Warsaw's thriving Jewish community lived in Mirów and Muranów, two districts to the west of Al Jana Pawła II. It was here that the Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, which was razed after the 1943 Ghetto Uprising. Today the area is characterised by cheap, communist-era apartment buildings, but a few remnants of Jewish Warsaw still survive in the former Jewish Ghetto. It is a large area to cover on foot, but fortunately the main sights are clustered together in the northern part.
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Praga
Crossing the Vistula from the Old Town into Praga, Warsaw's eastern suburb, is like entering another city. Clean, level streets and renovated buildings are replaced by broken roads and crumbling façades, and much of the populace is working class and poor. Despite the grit, Praga is the place to be. The area is slowly being gentrified as artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs move in, attracted by its pre-WWII buildings (as it was not directly involved in the battles of 1944, Praga didn't suffer much damage) and cheap rent. Ventures open and close on a regular basis but the list of established places grows steadily longer.
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Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Inside the Saxon Gardens, the remnants of the Saxon Palace (Pałac Saski), which was destroyed during WWII, shelter the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The guard is changed every hour, and groups of soldiers marching back and forth between the tomb and the Radziwiłł Palace are a regular sight, though the big event is the ceremonial changing of the guard that takes place every Sunday at noon.
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Ul Próżna
Ul Próżna, a short street leading off Plac Grzybowski, opposite the Teatr Żydowski (the Jewish Theatre), is an eerie and incongruous survivor of WWII. Its crumbling, unrestored redbrick façades, the ornamental stucco long since ripped away by bomb blasts, are still pockmarked with bullet and shrapnel scars. A few blocks to the south, in the courtyard of an apartment building at ul Sienna 55, stands one of the few surviving fragments of the redbrick wall that once surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto.
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