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Warsaw
has two enduring points of definition: the Wisla River, running south to north across the Mazovian plains, and the Moscow-Berlin road, stretching across this terrain - and through the city - east to west. Such a location, and four hundred years of capital status, have ensured a history writ large with occupations and uprisings, intrigues and heroism. Warsaw's sufferings, its near-total obliteration in World War II and subsequent resurrection from the ashes, has lodged the city in the national consciousness. In the latest era of political struggle - the emergence of Solidarity, fall of communism and the re-establishment of electoral democracy - Warsaw has at times seemed overshadowed by events in Gdansk and the industrial centres of the south, but its role has been a key one nonetheless, as a focus of popular and intellectual opposition to communism, the site of past and future power and, increasingly, as the centre of the country's rapid economic transformation.
Likely to be most visitors' first experience of Poland, Warsaw makes an initial impression that is all too often negative. The years of communist rule have left no great aesthetic glories, and there's sometimes a hollowness to the faithful reconstructions of earlier eras. However, as throughout Poland, the pace of social change is tangible and fascinating, as the openings provided by the post-communist order turn the streets into a continuous marketplace. Many of the once grey and tawdry state shopfronts of the city centre have given way to a host of colourful new private initiatives, while the postwar dearth of nightlife and entertainments has become a complaint of the past now that a mass of new bars, restaurants and clubs have established themselves.
A knowledge of Warsaw's rich and often tragic history can transform the city, revealing voices from the past in even the ugliest quarters: a pockmarked wall becomes a precious prewar relic, a housing estate the one-time centre of Europe's largest ghetto, the whole city a living book of modern history. Among the concrete, there are reconstructed traces of Poland's imperial past, including a castle, a scattering of palaces and parks, and the restored streets of the historic Stare Miasto, while the headlong rush into the embrace of capitalist culture is already throwing up its own particular architectural legacy, some of it familiar - towering skyscrapers and plush Western shopfronts - some more original - Party headquarters turned stock exchanges, Stalin-era palaces transformed into business centres. Indeed, new construction is everywhere: many of the areas of waste ground left untouched since the destruction of World War II have disappeared under gleaming new office blocks, while many public squares (notably pl. Defilad and pl. Bankowy) are receiving extensive facelifts in order to make room for brand-new metro stations, department stores or corporate headquarters.
Wending its way north towards Gdansk and the Baltic Sea, the
Wisla
river divides Warsaw neatly in half: the main sights are located on the western bank, the eastern consists predominantly of residential and business districts. Marking the northern end of the city centre, the busy
Stare Miasto
(Old Town) provides the historic focal point. Rebuilt from scratch after World War II like most of Warsaw, the magnificent Zamek KrElewski (Royal Castle), ancient Archikatedra sw. Jana (St John's Cathedral) and the Rynek Starego Miasta (Old Town Square) are the most striking examples of the capital's reconstruction. Baroque churches and the former palaces of the aristocracy line the streets west of the ring of defensive walls, and to the north, in the quietly atmospheric
Nowe Miasto
(New Town).
West of the Stare Miasto, in the
MuranEw
and
MirEw
districts, is the former
ghetto
area, where the Nozyck Synagogue and the ul. Okopowa cemetery bear poignant testimony to the lost Jewish population. South from the Stare Miasto lies
SrEdmiescie
, the city's commercial centre, its skyline dominated by the Palac Kultury i Nauk (Palace of Culture), Stalin's permanent legacy to the citizens of Warsaw. Linking the Stare Miasto and SrEdmiescie,
Krakowskie Przedmiescie
is dotted with palaces and Baroque spires, and forms the first leg of the
Trakt KrElewski
(Royal Way), a procession of open boulevards stretching all the way from plac Zamkowy to the stately king's residence at
WilanEw
on the southern outskirts of the city. Along the way is
Park Lazienkowski
, one of Warsaw's many delightful green spaces and the setting for the charming Palac Lazienkowski (Lazienki Palace), surrounded by waterways and lakes. Further out, the city becomes a welter of high-rise developments, but among them, historic suburbs like
Zoliborz
to the north and
Praga
to the east give a flavour of the authentic life of contemporary Warsaw.
Warsaw is a much livelier and more cosmopolitan place than it's given credit for in the West. It is a little-known fact, for instance, that there are up to thirty thousand Americans living in Warsaw - much the same number as in Prague - and since they're not all trying to write the Great American Novel, their contribution to the Polish capital has been more marked in terms of cuisine and practical facilities. It's an eye-opening experience for many people to walk the bustling, vibrant streets.
For those arriving without personal connections or contacts, Warsaw can seem forbidding, with much of the place still shutting down within a few hours of darkness, but Varsovians are generous and highly hospitable people: no social call, even to an office, is complete without a glass of
herbata
and plate of cakes. Postwar austerity has strengthened the tradition of home-based socializing, and if you strike up a friendship here (and friendships in Warsaw are quickly formed) you'll find much to enrich your experience of the city.
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