Warsaw

Overview

Warsaw is increasingly seen as the undiscovered jewel in Eastern Europe’s crown. It is a beautiful place, with the Old Town Square most painstakingly and judiciously rebuilt after the Nazis reduced it to rubble during World War II, the King’s Castle, gardens, and The National Theatre among its most glorious historic features. And if it were possible to view these landmarks in isolation, Warsaw would indeed represent the idyllic spot in which peddlers of traditional tourism want us to believe. The reality is the gritty authenticity of a city whose identity has been pushed, pulled and torn for the past 300 years, most recently by the Communist government that kept Poland on the wrong side of the iron curtain until 1989. Its unmistakeable symbols haunt the city-scape and pervade its nooks and crannies, from the imposing Palace of Culture and Science to the high-rise blocks that nestle alongside Warsaw’s aristocratic greatness. Walking down ‘Nowy Swiat’, the road that epitomised high society and luxury after Poland’s short-lived liberation in 1918, it is possible to forget the dirt and seediness around Jana Pawla II street, the wartime ghetto where street sellers still lay out their wares on old blankets and crates. Their stock of broken radios, drinking glasses bearing the symbols of Old Town cafés, odd items of clothing, and old fashioned telephones contrast with the sleek and pricey shops, cafes and antiques dealers in the more affluent parts of town. Yet in the seventeen years since the end of Communism, the...more

History