Attractions

Warsaw is a large city, so plan your exploration in pieces at a time, moving between areas with trams or taxis. A good place to start a walking tour of the city is the Old Town (Stare Miasto). The beautiful baroque and Renaissance-style burghers' houses would be remarkable in their own right for their beauty and period detailing, but what makes these houses truly astounding is that they're only a few decades old. As one of the main centers of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the Old Town bore the brunt of German reprisal attacks and the entire area, save for one building, was blown to bits at the end of 1944. After the war, to reclaim their heritage, the Polish people launched an enormous project to rebuild the Old Town exactly as it was, brick by brick. Many of the original architectural sketches were destroyed in the war, so the town was rebuilt from paintings, photographs, drawings, and people's memories. The reconstruction was so authentic that UNESCO in 1980 listed the Old Town as a World Heritage Site. Today, the Old Town is given over mostly to touts and tourists, but still rewards a couple of hours of strolling. Behind the old-world facades, the buildings themselves are modern apartment blocks. Spend a couple of hours walking here, taking in the central square, and the adjoining streets and alleyways. The Royal Castle, at the entrance to the Old Town, is also a replica, having been completed only in the 1980s. It's worth a stop to admire some rich period interiors and an excellent permanent art collection.

Continue your tour south along what's been known for centuries as Warsaw's Royal Route, following the now-swanky, cafe-lined streets of Krakowskie Przedmiescie and Nowy Swiat. As you walk, bear in the mind that these streets too saw intense fighting during World War II and were completely rebuilt from rubble after the war. Much of this area is dominated by Warsaw University, and the streets are often filled with students. By day, it's a great place to stroll and have a coffee; by night, you'll find plenty of clubs, bars, and restaurants.

Nowy Swiat eventually empties into Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Ave.), one of the main arteries of Warsaw's central city, Sródmiescie. This is the heart of the city, and you'll find yourself spending a lot of time on this avenue, and the giant avenue that bisects it at the geographic center of Sródmiescie, Marszalkowska. Heading west on Jerozolimskie, just beyond Marszalkowska, you can't miss the giant Stalinist wedding-cake Palace of Culture and Science, for years a symbol of the city's subjugation, firmly under the thumb of the Soviet Union. The 60-story structure was built in the 1950s as a "gift" (the kind you can't refuse) to the Polish people from Josef Stalin. What to do with the tower has bedeviled city planners since the fall of Communism in 1989. Suggestions have ranged from demolishing it to rehabbing it to its original purpose as a house of culture. The latter alternative appears to be winning out, and it looks as if the palace is here to stay. You can take an elevator to the 30th floor for some nice views of the city.

South of Jerozolimskie, following Marszalkowska, leads to a highly interesting complex of buildings built in the 1950s in an austere but still striking Socialist-Realist style. The most impressive -- or hideous, depending on your taste in architecture -- cluster of buildings lies on and around Constitution Place (Plac Konstytucji). Before the war, Marszalkowska was arguably the most fashionable avenue in Warsaw. It was totally destroyed by the Germans in reprisals for the Warsaw Uprising, and in the 1950s was widened and rebuilt in "Stalinist" style. Take a while to explore the area and the streets that branch off on both sides, noting the oversized reliefs of the proletariat heroes on the buildings. These days, this neighborhood is one of the trendiest in Warsaw and you'll see, sprouting here and there, hipster cafes and pubs that use the architecture in a newly ironic and humorous way.

Also south of Jerozolimskie, near the intersection with Nowy Swiat, lies the city's most exclusive quarter and home to many government buildings, including the parliament (Sejm) and foreign embassies. It's also the preferred neighborhood for exclusive boutiques and fashion houses. Find Three Crosses Square (Plac Trzech Krzyzy) and then follow the main boutique shopping street of Mokotowska. Make a note to come back here during the evening, when the street-side cafes start filling with life. A little farther on you'll find the city's favorite park for a stroll: Lazienki Park. The park is filled with little treasures, including a lake, lots of nice footpaths, and an overblown Art Deco statue honoring Poland's most famous composer, Frederyk Chopin (cultural aside: Chopin was born in Poland to a French father and a Polish mother). On Sundays in nice weather you'll find a regular Chopin-in-the-park concert; the music starts around noon. You'll also find here the very fine neoclassical summer palace of Poland's last king, Stanislaw August Poniatowski.

You'll find the former Jewish Ghetto north of the city center, just to the west of the Old Town. Most of the ghetto, which in the early years of World War II held some 380,000 Jews, was destroyed in the war, and walking around today you'll find few clues to its former role. There are plans to build a Jewish cultural center and museum here, but those are still some years away. For now, the main sights are an evocative Monument to the Ghetto Heroes (ul. Zamenhofe), which recalls the heroic Jewish uprising in 1943, and a concrete-bunker-type memorial at the "Umschlagplatz" (ul. Stawki near the corner with ul. Dzika), the place where Jews were rounded up for train transports to the Treblinka extermination camp in the east of the country.

As in Kraków, Lódz, and other Polish cities, the tragedy of the Jews here is one of the most poignant stories of the war. Here in Warsaw, the Germans first started rounding up the city's enormous Jewish population in 1940. The ghetto's population swelled to nearly 400,000 people (the exact figure is not known) and conditions were appalling. An elaborate system of gates and staircases was built to allow Jews inside to move within the ghetto, but no one was permitted to enter or leave. The mass deportations and killings began in 1942. The Jews rebelled in April 1943 as news of the gas chambers reached the ghetto and residents realized they had no choice but to fight. The heroic rebellion, the "first" Warsaw uprising, not to be confused with the general Warsaw uprising a year later, was brutally put down by the Germans. The ghetto was liquidated shortly thereafter, and what remained was destroyed in the general uprising the next year. Nearly all of the city's Jews were killed in the uprising or the extermination camps, and today only around 2,000 Jews remain in Warsaw. Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, The Pianist, recounts the story of the ghetto through the eyes of Wladyslaw Szpilman, an accomplished piano player and one of the ghetto's best-known residents. Szpilman eventually escaped during a transport to the concentration camp and survived the war. He even returned to live out his life in Warsaw.

In addition to the major sights listed below, there are smaller museums to suit every interest, including, among others, one dedicated to Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, Rynek Starego Miasta 20 (tel. 022/831-76-91); to composer Frederyk Chopin, Okólnik 1 (tel. 022/827-54-73); and to the horrific Katyn massacre in which an entire generation of Polish army officers -- some 20,000 in all -- was shot and killed by the Soviet Red Army in the Katyn woods, at ul. Powsinska 13 (tel. 022/842-66-11).