Warsaw, Poland — Where to Go
Warsaw Sightseeing Overview
Warsaw is a survivor - by the end of WWII, roughly 85% of the city lay in ruins and most of the population had fled, been killed, deported or sent to concentration camps. More than a third of Warsaw's pre-war population was Jewish, although there are hardly any traces of this heritage remaining, as the city's prosperous Jewish community was decimated by the end of the war.
Much of Warsaw's historic center was painstakingly recreated in the years after WWII, in a move by the communist authorities, which surprised the citizens of the city as much as it did the West.
The strikingly successful rebuilding of Warsaw's Old Town was finally rewarded in 1980, when the entire complex earned its place on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Sightseeing in Warsaw is generally concentrated on the left bank of the Vistula River. The UNESCO World Heritage Old Town is unmissable - quite literally, seeing as many of the city's attractions and a whole host of cafés, bars and restaurants are located within its environs.
Warsaw's Old Town is both a physical and symbolic expression of the city's spirit and determination to come back from the brink of annihilation at the end of WWII. Most visitors to Warsaw spend their first day strolling around the Old Town, where you can find the opulent and impressive Royal Castle, once home of the Polish kings. Outside the historic center is Wilanów, a charming palace on a grand scale, which was modeled on Versailles.
For many people, the very symbol of Warsaw is the voluminous Palace of Culture and Science, which was gifted to Warsaw by Stalin. The viewing deck on the 30th floor is accessible via express lifts and this is the best venue for visitors to get acquainted with the layout of the city.
Warsaw boasts a number of green lungs and Łazienki Park is one of the most relaxing, with its Palace on the Water and boating lake. The city is also home to an impressive array of cultural attractions, with a string of museums, including the National Museum, Warsaw Rising Museum, Chopin Museum and the haunting Pawiak Museum, which was used as a prison under the Nazis.
Warsaw Tourist Information
Stołeczne Biuro Turystyki (Warsaw Tourist Office)
Central Railway Station, Aleje Jerozolimskie 54
Tel: (022) 19431 or 474 1142.
Website: www.warsawtour.pl
Opening hours: Daily 0800-2100 (May-Sep); daily 0800-1900 (Oct-Apr).
There are three other tourist information points in Warsaw: at the airport arrivals hall (Terminal 2), the Old Town market square and near the Old Town at Ulica Krakowskie Przedmieście 15/17.
Warsaw Sightseeing
You can buy the Warsaw Tourist Card from tourist points and some hotels. This enables you to enjoy free city public transport and free or discounted entrance fees to many museums and select hotels. It is available for one or three days.
Warsaw Sightseeing
You can buy the Warsaw Tourist Card from tourist points and some hotels. This enables you to enjoy free city public transport and free or discounted entrance fees to many museums and select hotels. It is available for one or three days.
Key Attractions in Warsaw, Poland
Zamek Królewski (Royal Castle)
Walking through the Royal Castle in Warsaw, you have to constantly remind yourself that most of it was reconstructed between 1971 and 1984, although the darker elements of the décor were actually salvaged from the ruins. The castle, located on a plateau overlooking the Vistula River, was built for the Dukes of Mazovia and expanded when King Zygmunt III Vasa moved the capital to Warsaw. From the early 17th until the late 18th century, this was the seat of the Polish kings. It subsequently housed the parliament and is now a museum displaying tapestries, period furniture, coffin portraits and collections of porcelain and other decorative arts. The castle gardens, which were also badly scarred by the Nazis during WWII, have recently been redesigned and returned to their former glory.
Plac Zamkovy 4 (ticket office situated at Ulica Swietojanska 2)
Tel: (022) 355 5170 or 5338 (booking office).
Website: www.zamek-krolewski.pl
Opening hours: Tues-Sat 1000-1600, Sun 1100-1600.
Admission charge: Y (free on Sun).
Disabled access: Y.
Łazienki Park
In addition to a number of palaces, Łazienki Park contains the Chopin Monument (where the annual Chopin Festival is held each summer, with free concert recitals in the park twice on Sunday from June to August) and the Orangerie, set within extensive 18th-century gardens. Pałac Na Wyspie (Palace on the Water) is best viewed from near the monument to Jan Sobiewski, on the bridge where Ulica Agrykola crosses the water. Originally built in 1624, for King Zygmunt III Vasa, Zamek Ujazdowski (Ujazdowski Castle) now houses the Center of Contemporary Art, although the center is set to move locations in the coming years. The 1764 Pałac Belweder (Belvedere Palace) was the residence of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski and later of Poland's 20th-century presidents. On warm summer days, rowing boats offer short cruises around the park's lake. Cycling is banned in the park.
Ulica Agrykola 1
Tel: (022) 506 0101 .
Website: www.lazienki-krolewskie.pl
Opening hours: Most museums are open Tues-Sun 0900-1600; park open daily from 0800 until sunset.
Admission charge: N (charge for Palace on the Water and for the Orangerie).
Disabled access: Y.
Wilanów Palace
In the mid-1600s, King Jan III Sobieski commissioned Augustyn Locci to build the baroque palace and garden of Wilanów for his summer residence. Construction continued from 1677 until the king's death in 1696. It remained popular with subsequent monarchs. Visitors can tour the interior and the gallery, which features portraits of famous Poles. Artistic handicrafts are on display in the Orangerie. Also here is the Muzeum Plakatu w Wilanowie (Poster Museum at Wilanow), the first of its kind in the world.
Ulica Wiertnicza 1
Tel: (022) 842 0795.
Website: www.wilanow-palac.art.pl
Opening hours: Mon, Wed and Sat 0930-1830, Tues, Thurs and Fri 0930-1630, Sun 1030-1830 (May-mid-Sep); Mon and Wed-Sat 0930-1630, Sun 1030-1630 (mid-Sep-May).
Admission charge: Y (free admission to the park on Thurs and the palace on Sun).
Disabled access: Y.
Pawiak Prison
This eerie old prison symbolises the oppression that has haunted Varsovians over the last two centuries. Originally built in the 1830s, at the order of the ruling Czars, the prison incarcerated many victims of the Nazi reign of terror from 1939-1944, when it served as the largest political prison in Poland. A third of the estimated 100,000 detainees never made it out alive. The Nazis tried to dynamite the evidence of their crimes as they left but Pawiak is back as a museum and a testament to Warsaw's seemingly endless ability to suffer and survive.
Ulica Dzielna 24/26
Tel: (022) 831 1317.
Opening hours: Wed and Fri 0900-1700, Thurs and Sat 0900-1600, Sun 1000-1600.
Admission charge: N.
Disabled access: Y.
Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie (Warsaw National Museum)
The Warsaw National Museum's impressive art collection dates from ancient times to the present day. Highlights include Jan Matejko's monumental Battle of Grunwald (1878), which celebrates the Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410, and a collection of Egyptian art, which is unique in Europe. Unusually, there are also galleries of Polish and European decorative arts. Frequent temporary exhibitions bring prized international works (from Andy Warhol to Caravaggio) to Warsaw.
Aleje Jerozolimskie 3
Tel: (022) 621 1031 or 629 3093 (information line).
Website: www.mnw.art.pl
Opening hours: Tues 1000-1700, Wed-Thurs 1000-1600, Fri 1200-2100, Sat 1200-1800.
Admission charge: Y (free on Sat).
Disabled access: Y.
Katedra Św Jana (St John's Cathedral)
St John's is claimed to be the oldest church in Warsaw. Although a major church in the Mazovian gothic style, completed in the 15th century, St John's was only upgraded from a parish church to a cathedral in 1798. Destroyed during WWII, it has been reconstructed in its original style and features major gothic art works by Wit Stwosz. The cathedral was used in 1764 for the coronation of the last Polish king (Stanislaw II) and for the swearing in of the Sejm (Polish parliament) after the constitution of 1791. The covered footbridge connecting it to the Royal Palace was the result of a failed assassination attempt on King Zygmunt III.
Ulica Świętojaęska 8
Tel. (022) 831 0289.
Website: www.katedra.mkw.pl
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 1000-1800, Sun 1400-1800 (cathedral); daily 1000-1300 and 1500-1730 (crypt).
Admission charge: N (charge for the crypt).
Getto Żydowskie (Jewish Ghetto)
What is markedly absent from Warsaw contributes as much to its history as anything that has been preserved or reconstructed. Pre-war Warsaw had a Jewish population second only to New York. After the Nazi invasion, some 380,000 Jews were rounded up and forced into the city's Jewish ghetto. A 3m-high (10ft) wall encircled the area, from the Palace of Culture and Science to the Umschlagplatz monument, corner of Ulica Stawki and Ulica Dzika. This stark monument, erected in the late 1980s, marks the place from where Jews were dispatched by train to the Treblinka concentration camp, following the Ghetto Uprising of 19 April 1943. The center of the ghetto is marked by the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Ulica L Zamenhofa, which was erected on a sea of ruins in 1948. Other memorials are the Monument of the Killed and Murdered in the East, Ulica Muranowska, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising Monument, Plac Krasinskich. Only three sections of the actual ghetto wall remain.
Places of interest that connect Warsaw to Jewish history include the Nożyk Synagogue, the Jewish Historical Institute, the Jewish Cemetery and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews opposite the Ghetto Heroes monument.
Nożyk Synagogue
Places of interest that connect Warsaw to Jewish history include the Nożyk Synagogue, which is the only existing Warsaw synagogue to have survived the war, possibly because it was used as a Nazi warehouse.
Ulica Twarda 6
Tel: (022) 620 4324.
Website: www.warszawa.jewish.org.pl
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 0900-1700, Sun 1100-1800 (May-Sep); Mon-Fri 0900-1700, Sun 1100-1600 (Oct-Apr).
Admission charge: Y.
Disabled access: Y.
Warsaw Rising Museum
The Warsaw Rising Museum is a must-see for those with any interest in history and tales of bravery. In order to get a taste of what life in Warsaw must have been like for all Poles during WWII, this thoroughly comprehensive museum shows examples of how residents resisted the German forces through film footage, photographs, recorded interviews, life-size dioramas, soundscapes and informative plaques, written in both Polish and English. Cityscape pictures pinpointing the handful of buildings that survived WWII are located on the museum's elevated viewing platform; they are a grim reminder of the destruction wrought by the Nazis on Warsaw.
Ulica Przyokopowej 28
Tel: (022) 539 7905.
Website: www.1944.pl
Opening hours: Mon, Wed and Fri 0800-1800, Thurs 0800-2000, Sat-Sun 1000-1800.
Admission charge: Y.
Disabled access: Y.
Further Distractions
Pałac Kultury I Nauki (Palace of Culture and Science)
Varsovians are somewhat divided when it comes to this marvel of Socialist Realism, for decades (at 231m/757ft) the tallest and largest building in Poland and a reminder of Stalin's ambitions - it was a gift from him to the city, built between 1952-1955. The viewing platform on the 30th floor gives a terrific view over Warsaw. Besides offices, the building houses a concert hall, a cinema, an ice skating rink and a theater.
Ulica Emilii Plater
Tel: (022) 656 7600.
Website: www.pkin.pl
Opening hours: Sun-Thurs 0900-2000, Fri-Sat 0900-2300.
Admission charge: N (charge for the observation deck).
Disabled access: Y.
Chopin's Parlour
Frederic Chopin only lived in Warsaw until he was 20 years old but he is an honored Polish national. Chopin's Parlour, in his family's former home, is open to the public, while Chopin's heart is interred in a pillar at the Church of the Holy Cross (Kosciol Znalezienia Swietego Krzyna) next door. His body, however, lies in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. There is also the Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina, located in Ostrogski Castle, with exhibits on the different phases of his life and career.
Ulica Krakowskie Przedmiescie 5
Tel: (022) 320 0275.
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 1000-1400.
Admission charge: N.
Disabled access: Y.
Muzeum Pawilon-X (Block 10 Museum)
Housed in the Citadel, a solid 19th-century fortress north of the Old Town, this Warsaw museum was once used as a prison for political enemies of the Russian Czars. The lucky inmates were shipped to labor camps in Siberia; the unlucky executed at Brama Straceń (Gate of Execution) on the prison grounds. The original cells are still standing and labelled with some of the prison's more famous residents, and paintings by Alexander Sochaczewski, a former inmate, adorn the walls.
Ulica Skazańców 25
Tel: (022) 839 2383.
Opening hours: Wed-Sun 0900-1600.
Admission charge: N.
Disabled access: Y.
