Warsaw Old Town

The copper dome belongs to St. Kazimierz, the church of the Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament. Queen Marie Casimire funded it in thanks for the relief of Vienna in 1683. Tylman van Gameren designed the building. The foundation stone was laid in January 1688, and Bishop Bartłomiej Tarło consecrated the church on 16 June 1715. The New Town grew up outside the city walls, with this market as its centre. Stand on the square and look at the façades: they are postwar reconstructions, like almost all of the historic centre you will walk through today. On 31 August 1944, during the Warsaw Rising, German aircraft bombed the church. About a thousand civilians who had taken shelter here were killed, together with four priests and 34 nuns, according to the sisters' own chronicle and a City of Warsaw account of that day. A second raid followed on 1 September. The complex was 80 to 90 percent destroyed. Rebuilding began in 1947, to a design by Maria Zachwatowiczowa for the Warsaw Reconstruction Office. The first Mass after the war was celebrated on 1 January 1952, and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński reconsecrated the church on 19 May 1973. This stop is the exterior; the church is open to visitors when services allow. Walk south along Freta Street. In about 200 metres, on the right, you will reach number 16, the house where Maria Skłodowska-Curie was born.

The pale tenement at Freta 16 is the house where Maria Skłodowska was born on 7 November 1867. Her mother, Bronisława, ran a girls' boarding house here. Maria left Warsaw to study in Paris, and as Marie Curie she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, which she received alone. She remains the only person awarded Nobel Prizes in two scientific fields. She died on 4 July 1934. A photograph from 1945 in the museum's collection shows her sister, Helena Skłodowska-Szalay, standing in front of this house when it was still a ruin. The tenement was rebuilt after the war. On 7 October 1954, Irène Joliot-Curie opened an exhibition here in the newly established Maria Skłodowska-Curie Scientist House. The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum of the Polish Chemical Society opened in the same building on 16 October 1967, the hundredth anniversary of her birth; her daughter Eve Curie was at the ceremony. The museum you see today continues that collection. Continue south along Freta Street toward the Barbican and the old city walls, a walk of about two minutes.

The red-brick Barbican marks the old gate between the New Town and the Old Town. Giovanni Battista of Venice, also known as John Baptist of Venice, designed it in 1548. It is one of the few works of its kind still standing in Poland, though most of what you see is a postwar reconstruction. A tenement that had been built onto the structure was destroyed in 1944. Look closely at the masonry: black mortar marks the stretches of original medieval wall; the rest was rebuilt after the war. The city walls themselves survived in better condition than the townhouses inside them. If you glance west along Podwale, you will see a small figure of a child in a helmet, the Little Insurgent. Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz's monument, erected in 1983, commemorates the youngest who took part in the 1944 rising. This walk stays on the public pavement. Pass through the Barbican into the Old Town and follow Nowomiejska Street to the Market Square, about two minutes ahead. Meet at the mermaid in the middle of the square.

The mermaid in the middle of the square is Warsaw's coat of arms in bronze. Konstanty Hegel modelled her in early February 1855. Karol Juliusz Minter cast the figure in tin and bronzed it, and she was set here in 1855 as a fountain, on the site of the old town hall, which had been demolished in 1817. The sculpture on the square today is a copy, placed here in 2008. The original Hegel mermaid is in the Museum of Warsaw, after years of damage and several moves around the city. Now look at the townhouses. Almost all of them were rebuilt after 1944. On 1 August that year the Polish Home Army rose against the German occupation. The Warsaw Rising lasted 63 days, from 1 August to 2 October. The Warsaw Rising Museum estimates that about 130,000 to 150,000 civilians were killed, and about 16,000 Polish insurgents. Other official Polish accounts put the civilian death toll as high as 150,000 to 200,000. After the fighting ended, German demolition units went on destroying what was left. UNESCO records that more than 85 percent of Warsaw's historic centre was destroyed by Nazi troops. Over the war as a whole, the left-bank city lost about 84 percent of its buildings, according to the museum. From 1945 the Warsaw Reconstruction Office, the Biuro Odbudowy Stolicy, directed the rebuilding. The Old Town was reconstructed to look as it had in the late eighteenth century, from inventories and views of the city. Some cellars, ground floors and stretches of wall had survived. Work on the Old Town continued into the mid-1960s. UNESCO inscribed the Historic Centre of Warsaw on the World Heritage List in 1980. Leave the square by Świętojańska Street, which runs south toward the castle. St. John's Archcathedral is a short walk on your left, about two minutes.

The brick façade in Mazovian Gothic belongs to St. John's Archcathedral, the main church of old Warsaw. It is first documented in 1339, when papal judges sat here in a case against the Teutonic Knights. The church became a collegiate church between 1398 and 1406. Two kings were crowned here: Stanisław Leszczyński in 1705 and Stanisław August Poniatowski in 1764. On 3 May 1791, after the Constitution was adopted in the Senators' Chamber of the Royal Castle, it was sworn in this church. The building became a cathedral in 1798 and an archcathedral in 1817. In the nineteenth century, Adam Idźkowski recast the front in an English neo-Gothic style. The cathedral was already damaged in September 1939. In 1944, fighting took place inside the church. German forces later drove a tank loaded with explosives against it, and after the rising a demolition unit packed the walls with TNT. According to a letter by Cardinal Wyszyński quoted on the cathedral's own site, about 90 percent of the walls were destroyed. Jan Zachwatowicz rebuilt the church in Mazovian Gothic. Cardinal Wyszyński consecrated the reconstructed cathedral on 9 June 1960. The Baryczka crucifix, in its chapel, survived the destruction. This stop is the exterior; go in only if a service or visiting hours allow it. Continue down Świętojańska Street to Castle Square and stand by Sigismund's Column, with the Royal Castle on your left.

The column in the middle of the square is the oldest secular monument in Warsaw. King Władysław IV commissioned it in 1644 in honour of his father, Sigismund III Vasa, who in 1596 moved the royal court from Cracow to Warsaw. Cracow remained the official capital and the coronation city; Warsaw became the residence of the kings, and later the capital in practice. Augustyn Locci drew up the concept. Costante Tencalla designed the column, Clemente Molli modelled the statue, and Daniel Tym cast it. On the night of 1–2 September 1944 a German tank gun hit the column and the shaft broke. The statue of the king survived the fall. The monument was rebuilt under Stanisław Żaryn and unveiled again on 22 July 1949. The Łopieński Brothers restored the bronze. Fragments of the old shafts lie beside the castle, toward the W-Z Route, if you want to look at them later. The castle itself burned on 17 September 1939. Museum staff under Stanisław Lorentz got many interior fittings out. During the rising, in September 1944, German forces blew the castle up. The decision to rebuild it came in January 1971; work started that September. The clock on the tower was started again in July 1974, and the castle opened to the public in August 1984, funded largely by public donations. It was in the Senators' Chamber here that the Constitution of 3 May 1791 was adopted. Walk south onto Krakowskie Przedmieście. St. Anne's Church is immediately on your left.

The pale classical façade is St. Anne's, the academic church of Warsaw. Anna of Holszany, Duchess of Mazovia, founded it in 1454 for the Bernardine Franciscans. The front you are looking at is later: Chrystian Piotr Aigner designed this Palladian façade in 1788, with the support of Józef Kwieciński and Stanisław Kostka Potocki. The statues of the Evangelists, by Andrea Monaldi and Giacomo Pinck, were a gift of King Stanisław August. Aigner also remodelled the bell tower; the terrace and gloriette sit above it, and a colonnade was added in 1821. If the terrace is open, the view over the river and the Old Town is worth the climb, but this stop stays on the pavement. In September 1939 the Loreto chapel was destroyed and the roofs burned. During the 1944 rising, German forces occupied the church as a defensive point. The roofs burned again late in the year, and plaster and polychromy fell from the vaults, but the walls and the bell tower survived. A storm in 1946 brought down the west gable. Works on the W-Z Route in 1949 cracked the walls; Wacław Żenczykowski led the emergency shoring. Continue south along Krakowskie Przedmieście for about six or seven minutes. The Presidential Palace stands on your right, behind the monument of Prince Józef Poniatowski and its four lions. Stay on the public pavement.

The long classical front on your right is the Presidential Palace, the largest palace in Warsaw. Grand Crown Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski and his son Aleksander built it in the 1640s, to a design by Constantino Tencalla, court architect to King Władysław IV. Within a few years it passed to the Lubomirski family, and in 1674 it came to the Radziwiłłs, who held it for almost 150 years. Between 1768 and 1778 it was fitted out as a theatre, with a box for King Stanisław August. In 1818 the government of the Congress Kingdom bought the palace as the residence of the namiestnik, the viceroy; General Józef Zajączek lived here. Napoleon visited the palace. According to the city's official tourism site, Fryderyk Chopin gave his first public concert here at the age of eight. The building is now the seat of the President of the Republic of Poland. The monument in front is Prince Józef Poniatowski, with four lions at the corners. Do not approach the guarded gates; this stop is the view from the pavement. Keep walking south on Krakowskie Przedmieście. You will pass the main gate of the University of Warsaw on your left. Holy Cross Church stands on the right about seven or eight minutes further on, and just beyond it, in front of Staszic Palace, is the Copernicus Monument, where the walk ends.

The baroque façade on your right, a short way back along the street, is Holy Cross Church. Queen Ludwika Maria Gonzaga brought the Missionary priests to Warsaw in 1653. The present church was built between 1682 and 1757, by Józef Szymon Bellotti, with the façade by Jakub Fontana. Inside, in a pillar of the nave, is the heart of Fryderyk Chopin. His sister Ludwika brought it from Paris in 1850. The present memorial, by Leandro Marconi, was unveiled in 1880; the inscription is a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” During the 1944 rising the church was a combat redoubt and was heavily damaged. The parish records that the figure of Christ carrying the cross, in front of the church, fell onto the pavement. Chopin's heart was taken to Milanówek for safety and returned on 17 October 1945, the anniversary of his death. Cardinal Wyszyński consecrated the reconstructed high altar in 1953. This stop is the exterior; you can go in when the church is open. A few steps on, in front of Staszic Palace, stands the monument to Nicolaus Copernicus. Bertel Thorvaldsen designed it. Stanisław Staszic proposed the monument and paid part of the cost. The bronze was cast by Jan Gregoire and Sebastian Norblin, the pedestal by Adam Idźkowski. It was unveiled here on 11 May 1830. That is the end of the walk: nine stops and about 2.2 kilometres, from the New Town to this point on the Royal Route.