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| Warsaw
Sightseeing |
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Sightseeing Overview
For many, the very symbol of the city is the huge 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 spot for visitors to get familiar with the layout of the city.
Sightseeing in Warsaw is 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, restaurants and bars are located within its vicinity. The Old Town is both physical and symbolic expression of the city’s spirit and determination to come back from the brink of total destruction at the end of World War II. Most visitors to Warsaw spend their first day wandering around the Old Town, where one can find the rich and impressive Royal Castle, once home of the Polish kings. Just outside the historic centre is Wilanow, a charming palace on a grand scale, which was modelled on Versailles.
Warsaw boasts numerous green lungs and Lazienki Park is one of the most soothing, with its Palace on the Water and boating lake. The city is 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.
Tourist Information
Punkt Informacji Turystycznej (Tourist Information Point)
Central Railway Station, Aleje Jerozolimskie 54
Telephone: (022) 9431.
Fax: (022) 650 2231.
E-mail: info@warsawtour.pl
Website: www.warsawtour.pl
Opening hours: Daily 0900-2000hrs (May-Sep); Daily 0900-1800 (Oct-Apr).
Service is friendly, efficient, and the staffs speak English. They can also make hotel reservations, and produce a weekly leaflet listing the latest cultural events and activities for the week.
There are two other tourist information points at the Okecie Airport arrivals hall and at Warsaw West coach station at aleje Jerozolimskie 144, and another one, soon to open at 36 Krakowskie Przedmiescie.
A privately run Tourist Information Center, Plac Zamkowy 1/13 (tel: (022) 635 1881) offers guidebooks and guided tours in several languages for a fee.
Passes
The Warsaw Tourist Card can be bought from tourist points and enables the cardholder to enjoy free city public transport and free or discounted entrance fees to many museums and select hotels. The cost is ZL35 for a day pass and ZL65 for a 3 day pass.
Key Attractions
Zamek Krolewski (Royal Castle)
Walking through the Royal Castle, one has to continuously remind oneself that most of it was reconstructed between 1971 and 1984, although the darker elements of the decor were actually salvaged from the ruins. The castle, that is 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 18th century, this was the seat of the Polish kings. It subsequently housed the parliament and is now a museum displaying period furniture, tapestries, coffin portraits and collections of porcelain and other decorative arts. Work is in progress to recreate the castle gardens, set on the slopes of the Vistula River, which were also badly scarred when the Nazis levelled the rest of the castle complex.
Plac Zamkovy 4 (ticket office situated at ulica Swietojanska 2)
Telephone: (022) 657 2170.
Website: www.zamek-krolewski.art.pl
Opening hours: Tues-Sat 1000-1800hrs, Sun and Mon 1100-1800. Last visitors admitted an hour before closing.
Admission charge.
Lazienki Park
In addition to the numerous palaces, Lazienki Park contains the Chopin Monument – where the annual Chopin Festival is held each summer (free concert recitals in the park twice on Sunday from June – August) – and the Orangerie, set within extensive 18th-century gardens. Palac Na Wyspie (Palace on the Island) is best observed 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) currently houses the Centre of Contemporary Art. The 1764 Palac Belweder (Belvedere Palace) was the home of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski and later of Poland’s 20th century presidents. On warm summer days, rowing boats offer short cruises around the lake. Cycling is forbidden in the park.
Ulica Agrykola 1
Telephone: (022) 621 8212/6241.
Website: www.lazienki-krolewskie.com.
Opening hours: Most museums closed on Mondays; 0900-1600hrs; park open daily from 0800 until sunset.
Free admission to the park; charge for Palace on the Water and for the Orangerie.
Wilanow Palace
In the mid 1600s, King Jan III Sobieski commissioned Augustyn Locci to build the Baroque palace and garden of Wilanow for his summer residence. Construction continued from 1677 until the king’s death in the year 1696. It remained quite popular with subsequent monarchs. Visitors can tour the interior and the gallery, which features portraits of renowned Poles. Artistic handicrafts are also on display in the Orangerie. Also here is the Muzeum Plakatu w Wilanowie (Poster Museum at Wilanow), the first of its kind in the whole world. Entrance to the palace requires a guide, for a group of 1 to 35 people, although the park is open to unaccompanied visitors. Restoration work is ongoing but it only affects a few visits.
Ulica St Kostki-Potockiego 10/16
Telephone: (022) 842 8101.
Website: www.wilanow-palac.art.pl
Opening hours: Palace open daily except Tuesdays, 0900-1600hrs; Park open on Sunday until 1900 and Wed until 1800 from May-Sept; park open daily until sunset.
Admission charge for both the park and the palace; free admission to the park on Thursdays.
Pawiak Prison
This creepy 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 numerous 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 survived. The Nazis tried to dynamite the evidence of their crimes as they left but Pawiak is back as a museum and an evidence to the city’s seemingly endless ability to suffer and survive.
Ulica Dzielna 24/26
Telephone: (022) 831 1317.
Opening hours: Wed 0900-1700hrs, Thurs 0900-1600hrs, Fri 1000-1700hrs, Sat 0900-1600hrs, Sun 1000-1600hrs.
Free admission.
Narodowe (National Museum)
The National Museum’s imposing art collection dates from ancient times to the present day. Highlights include Jan Matejko’s monumental Battle of Grunwald, which celebrates the Polish triumph over the Teutonic Knights in 1410, and a collection of Egyptian art, which is unique in Europe. Unusually, there are also galleries of European and Polish decorative arts. Frequent temporary exhibitions bring prized international works to Warsaw.
Aleje Jerozolimskie 3
Telephone: (022) 621 1031.
Website: www.mnw.art.pl
Opening hours: Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat and Sun 1000-1600hrs, Thurs 1000-1800hrs. Closed Mon.
Admission charge; free Sat.
Katedra sw Jana (St John’s Cathedral)
St John’s Cathedral claims to be the oldest church in Warsaw. Although a major church in the Mazovian Gothic style, completed in 15th century, St John’s was only upgraded from a parish church to a cathedral in 1798. Destroyed during World War II, 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 (the Polish Parliament) after the constitution of 1791. The covered footbridge connecting it to the Royal Palace was a result of the failed assassination attempt on King Zygmunt III.
Ulica Swietojanska 8
Telephone:(022) 831 0289.
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 1000-1800hrs, Sun 1400-1800hrs (cathedral); daily 1000-1300hrs and 1500-1730hrs (crypt).
Admission charge for the crypt.
Getto Zydowskie (Jewish Ghetto)
What is markedly absent from Warsaw contributes as much to its history as anything that has been preserved or rebuilt. Pre war Warsaw had a Jewish population second only to New York. After the Nazi invasion, some 400,000 Jews were rounded up and enforced to stay in the Jewish ghetto. A 3 meter high 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 centre of the ghetto is marked by the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, ulica L Zamenhofa, which was erected on a sea of ruins in the year 1948. Other memorials are the Monument of the Killed and Murdered in the East, ulica Muranowska, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising Monument, on plac Krasinskich. Only 3 sections of the actual ghetto wall remain.
You can pick up the ‘Jewish Warsaw’ leaflet from the tourist centres; it highlights places of interest that connect to Jewish history. Noteworthy points include: the Nozyk Synagogue, which is the only existing Warsaw synagogue to have survived the war, possibly because it was used as a Nazi warehouse; the Jewish Historical Institute, which includes artwork exhibits and library and photographic archives; and the Jewish Cemetery, founded in 1806 and still used. There are also plans for a new Jewish museum highlighting Jewish culture, which will be funded by Jewish groups around the world.
Nozyk Synagogue
Ulica Twarda 6
Telephone: (022) 620 4324.
Admission charge.
Jewish Cemetery
Ulica Okopowa 49/51
Jewish Historical Institute and Ronald S Lauder Foundation Genealogy Project
Ulica Tlomackie 3/5
Telephone: (022) 827 9221.
Website: www.jewishinstitute.org.pl
Opening hours: Mon-Wed; Fri 0900-1600hrs; Thurs 1100-1800hrs.
Admission charge.
Warsaw Rising Museum
A must-see museum for those with an 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 the Second World War, this new and thoroughly comprehensive museum shows illustrations 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.
Ulica Grzybowska 79
Telephone: (022) 626 9506.
Website: www.1944.pl
Opening hours: Mon, Wed, Fri-Sun 1000-1800hrs; Thurs 1000-2000hrs. Closed Tues.
Admission charge.
Further Distractions
Palac Kultury I Nauki (Palace of Culture and Science)
Varsovians are fairly divided when it comes to this marvel of Socialist Realism, for decades (at 231m) 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 wonderful view over Warsaw. Besides offices, the building houses a cinema, a concert hall, an ice skating rink and a theatre.
Ulica Emilii Plater
Telephone: (022) 656 7136.
Website: www.pkin.pl
Opening hours: Daily 0900-1800hrs.
Admission charge for the observation deck.
Frederic Chopin
Chopin lived in Warsaw until he was 20 years old but he is an honoured Polish national. Chopin’s Parlour, in his family’s former home, is open to 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, on the other hand, 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 his career.
Chopin’s Parlour
Ulica Krakowskie Przedmiescie 5
Telephone: (022) 320 0275.
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 1000-1400hrs.
Free admission.
Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina
Ulica Okolnik 1
Telephone:(022) 826 5935.
Website: www.chopin.pl/zabytki/muzeum/muzeum-en.html
Opening hours: Mon, Wed, Fri 1000-1700hrs, Thurs 1200-1800hrs; Sat/Sun 1000-1400hrs (May-Sep); Mon-Wed, Fri/Sat 1000-1400hrs; Thurs 1200-1800hrs (Oct-Apr).
Admission charge. (Please note that this museum will be closed for refurbishment from July to Oct 2005) |
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