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.