1. Ochota

Spiska 1

If the mural on Tarczyńska 1 was met with negativity, then the one at Spiska 1 – also implemented as part of the Civic Budget – has enjoyed the opposite impact. Though featuring landmarks such as the modernist train station and lighthouse-style tower at the waterworks, this one openly celebrates the area’s green credentials – as such, find a hip-looking cyclist biking over a giant mass of greenery. That’s more like it!

2. Humalus

Nowogrodzka 76

A mass of post-war concrete, the rat run of stagnant stairwells and corridors that lie between Nowogrodzka and Jerozolimskie will bring you face-to-face with Humalus, a 30-metre mural depicting the silhouette of a half-naked man. Featuring also numerous limbs twisting out from the windows, it was painted by Gore in 2012 and seeks to ask the question, “Who will the new man be?”

3. Deyna

Gorlicka 3

Completed in 2020, this mural celebrates Polish football’s original maverick: Kazimierz Deyna. A Legia Warsaw legend, the playboy footballer was instrumental to the success of his club and country in the 1970s. Later enjoying cult status at Man City (who sweetened the transfer deal with a pile of Adidas gear and electronic equipment), he died in a car crash in America in 1989.

4. Consumerism & Ant Hill

Skarżyńskiego 8

Located on the walls of a school, both these works can be photographed through gaps in the fence – but obviously, that’s probably not a smart thing to do when the kids around lest you cause an incident. With a ‘for sale’ sign hanging off a derelict house, one seeks to make an ironic comment on our consumerist society whilst the other depicts an army of giant ants taking control of the city – draw your own conclusions on that.

5. Halina & Jan Machulski

Mikołaja Reja 9

Pleasingly minimal yet also highly graphic, the mural that embellishes the Och-Teatr was the winning entry from a competition held to celebrate the theatre’s 50th anniversary. The mural shows Jan and Halina Machulski, the theatre’s founders, posed on the institution’s current logo. “We deconstructed the sign and created a composition illustrating Och-Teatr as a place of constant creation,” say the duo that coined the concept.

6. Lace

Grójecka 93

Lacking any official name, locals know this work simply as Koronka (lace). Painted by Nespoon in 2015, the artist has since seen her work go globally viral. Famed for her trademark lace patterns, the artist has even covered entire villages – such as Belorado in Spain – with her work.

7. Ochota na życie

Tarczyńska 1

Found on the back of the building – so actually visible only from Raszyńska street – this jaunty mural was commissioned as part of the Civic Budget. Costing PLN 72,000, not all residents have been happy with the result. Painted to show the best face of Ochota, many locals have complained that the mural focuses too much on manmade objects rather than the district’s greener glories…

8. 1831 Defence of the Ordon Redoubt

Bohaterów Września 19

Immortalised in an Adam Mickiewicz poem, this mural recalls an episode during the 1831 November Uprising. With just 200 soldiers and six cannons, besieged Polish forces faced insurmountable odds surrounded as they were by several thousand Russians and 400 cannons. But having broken into the Polish defensive position, the ammunition exploded, massacring the Russians. The mural also honours Poland’s latter-day army.

9. Witold Kieżun

Tarczyńska 12

This 210 sq/m mural was painted last year to coincide with what would have been Witold Kieżun’s 100th birthday. Famed for his work with the Polish underground, he once took 14 Germans prisoner during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Later, he became an internationally acclaimed economist. The mural shows him in his younger wartime days dressed both as a soldier and in his civvies. For years he lived in America before moving back in the 1990s and settling in Ochota.