Lost Warsaw: General Berling
FeaturesInsider News 11 March 2023 0
Nearly four-years after it was destroyed by vandals, a controversial statue of General Zygmunt Berling has been rediscovered lying in pieces in a stretch of Grochów parkland. Originally sculpted in 1985 by Kazimierz Danilewicz, the three-metre monument was produced from white Russian marble and placed on an equally tall... Read more
Offering a compelling glimpse into the past, a new exhibition has opened in the Praga Museum to provide a photographic portrait of the everyday lives of the locals in the 1970s. Born in 1939, Albert Krystyniak moved with his family to Warsaw’s eastern suburb after the war, and spent... Read more
“I have seen many cities destroyed, but nowhere have I been faced with such destruction.” So said a stunner General Eisenhower whilst touring the ruins of Warsaw at the end of the war. Even be their own horrifying benchmarks, the Nazis had done a sickeningly proficient job of flattening... Read more
Warsaw’s Newest Monument Debuts
Insider News 2 June 2021 0
Positioned at the junction of Kopernika and Świętokrzyska, the work honors the Solidarity movement that played such a pivotal role in the fall of Communism. Created following a campaign by Janusz K. Dorosiewicz (previously credited as the driving force behind monuments to Ronald Reagan and footballer Kazimierz Deyna), the... Read more
Sometimes referred to as the ‘propaganda district’ it was here that the commie town planners let idealism run free. “A stone wedding cake covered with balconies built of boulders,” wrote one critic. Although much of the area survived the war, this was not enough to save it. Earmarked to... Read more
Originally established by an 18th century nobleman who named it after his wife, Maria, it didn’t take long for the Mariensztat district to veer from its intended genteel look. By the outbreak of WWII the area had become an unnavigable confusion of tangled streets and tumbledown tenements: pimps, prostitutes... Read more
Providing a sinister glimpse into Poland’s totalitarian past, a new book compiled by Beata Bartecka and Łukasz Rusznica sheds light on the extreme methods used by the country’s secret services to spy on its people. Ironically titled How to Look Natural in Photographs, the idea for the book first... Read more
First submitted as part of 2017’s civic budget, the idea was coined by Olga Gastecka who sought to enhance the area’s public space by adding city furniture that would provide “a place of rest for thousands of rushing people.” To do so, it was decided to follow the aesthetics... Read more
Sixty-five years old today, we dredge through the archives to present the Insider’s quintessential piece about the Palace of Culture and Science… BY JAY MARTIN The inclusion of the Palace of Culture & Science on Warsaw’s official heritage list in 2007 provoked general outrage. A protest letter signed by... Read more
With Warsaw undergoing a neon resurgence, we track down our favorites: the new, the old, the storied and those that are simply stunning… CeDeT Bracka / Jerozolimskie Designed and produced in East Germany as ‘an expression of gratitude’ after the Germans were given use of the first floor to... Read more
