Four days in Warsaw: not a beautiful city, and much the more interesting for it

Three nights on the Vistula: the rebuilt old town and the royal castle, the Rising museum, POLIN and the ghetto ground, a park full of peacocks, and Chopin on the last morning.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Warsaw
Places
10 across 4 days
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Most people arrive in Warsaw having been told it is the boring one. They are thinking of Kraków, which is prettier and knows it. What Warsaw has instead is the twentieth century, in more concentrated form than anywhere else in Europe: a ghetto that held something like 400,000 people and is now a housing estate, an uprising that lasted 63 days and ended with the deliberate demolition of what was left, and a rebuild carried out under a government nobody voted for.

The old town you walk through is a reconstruction, finished mostly in the 1950s, and nobody hides it. The architects worked from surviving fragments, from photographs, and from Bellotto's painted views of the eighteenth century city, which is why the facades on the market square are so precisely wrong-looking: they are copies of a moment. UNESCO listed the result in 1980, which was a deliberate statement about what reconstruction can mean.

Three nights is enough for the two great museums, the old town, one long afternoon in a park and an evening on the far bank. It is a cheap city by western European standards, it eats extremely well, and it is flat, green and easy to cross.

Highlights

  • An old town rebuilt from paintings, and honest about being one
  • The Warsaw Rising Museum, which is about 63 days in 1944 and takes most of a morning
  • POLIN, where Polish Jewish history is told forwards rather than backwards from its ending
  • Stalin's skyscraper, and the view from the thirtieth floor of the one building you cannot see it from
  • Peacocks, a palace on an island, and free Chopin on a Sunday afternoon

Where to stay

Warsaw, three nights

Warsaw sits on the Vistula with almost everything on the west bank. The reconstructed old town is at the northern end, the business centre and Stalin's tower are in the middle, the parks and embassies run south along a boulevard of palaces, and the museums about the war are in Wola to the west. The east bank, Praga, escaped the demolition and looks it: pre-war tenements, courtyard shrines, and the bars that moved in when the rents were still low.

Sleep in the centre if you want to walk to things, or in Powiśle, the strip between the centre and the river, which is where the city's own weekend happens. There is very little reason to sleep in the old town itself.

The city is 1.8 million people and feels bigger, partly because it was rebuilt for cars and partly because so much of it is post-war blocks with grass between them. That is not a criticism once you understand what was here in 1945: photographs of Wola in that year show a horizon with nothing standing on it.

Day by day

Day 1 in Warsaw

The Royal Castle, the cathedral and the old town square

Start at Castle Square, where a column holding a king with a sword marks the top of the old royal route. The castle behind it was blown up in 1944 and left as a hole in the ground until the 1970s, when it was rebuilt largely on public donations, with people posting money in from all over the country and abroad. Inside, some of the interiors are original fittings that had been carried out and hidden, and some are educated guesswork, and the museum tells you which is which.

The cathedral is a hundred metres along the narrow street beyond. It was a florid neo-Gothic building before the war and came back as something much plainer and older-looking, on the theory that this was closer to what it started as. The dukes of Mazovia are downstairs.

Then the market square, which is smaller than you expect and better for it. Sit on the side with the sun and remember that every building around you was a pile of bricks in 1945, and that the details on them were copied off canvases painted in the 1770s.

  1. 15:00

    The Royal Castle

    Historic

    Seat of the Polish kings and later of the parliament, dynamited by the Germans in 1944 and rebuilt between 1971 and 1984. The state rooms, the Canaletto room and two Rembrandts are the reasons to go in. Book online in summer.

  2. 17:00

    St. John's Cathedral

    Religious

    The city's cathedral, rebuilt after the war in a sober brick Gothic thought to be near its original form rather than the ornate nineteenth century version that burned. The crypt holds Mazovian dukes and a few national figures. Half an hour is plenty.

  3. 18:00

    Old Town Market Square

    Architecture

    The heart of the reconstruction: four sides of tall painted houses around a mermaid, all of it rebuilt from rubble in the early 1950s. Coffee here costs what you would expect. Walk out through the north side afterwards to the quieter square beyond it.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner on the west side of the old town

    Eat

    The streets running down towards the barbican have the least touristy kitchens in the quarter, and Freta is lined with them.

With more time: The old town wall runs behind the square with a round brick barbican set into it, and the walk along the outside of it to the New Town takes fifteen minutes. Further out, the Marie Curie museum occupies the house she was born in and takes half an hour.

Day 2 in Warsaw

The Rising museum, the last working synagogue, and the top of Stalin's tower

Get to Wola early. The Rising museum is the single thing most likely to change how you think about this city, and it is built to be walked through slowly: film of the fighting, a reproduced sewer you can crawl through, the underground press, the field post, and at the end a film that flies you low over the flattened city as it stood in 1945.

Afterwards, walk east towards the centre through streets that were the ghetto. There is nothing left standing to see, which is the point, and it is worth knowing where you are: the Germans sealed the district in 1940, and by the time the fighting there ended in 1943 the buildings had been demolished block by block. Fragments of the wall survive in two courtyards, marked with plaques.

End the day up the tower. The observation deck is on the thirtieth floor of a building nobody in Warsaw can decide whether to love, and the view from it is the only one in the city that does not have the thing itself in the middle of it.

  1. 10:00

    The Warsaw Rising Museum

    Culture

    The insurrection of 1 August 1944, told across several levels of a converted power station with a great deal of film and sound. There is one free day a week and it is the busiest of them, so check before you fix the day. Allow at least two hours.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch near Plac Grzybowski

    Eat

    The square has a couple of good modern Polish kitchens and a milk bar within a block, which covers both budgets.

  3. 14:30

    Nożyk Synagogue

    Religious

    The only orthodox synagogue still in use in Warsaw and the one prewar synagogue building to survive, because the Germans used it as a stable. It is a working place of worship, so dress accordingly and check the visiting hours.

  4. 17:30

    Palace of Culture and Science

    Historic

    Stalin's gift to Warsaw, built in the 1950s and hated, tolerated and finally adopted. Theatres, cinemas and a museum inside, and an express lift to the viewing terrace on the thirtieth floor. Go up an hour before sunset and take a coat: it is windy at any temperature.

With more time: If the tower does not appeal, the older of the two viewing platforms in the centre is the terrace on the university library roof, which is a garden, free, and looks over the river instead. The bars around Plac Zbawiciela are ten minutes south of the tower and are where the evening goes.

Day 3 in Warsaw

POLIN in the morning, Łazienki in the afternoon

POLIN faces the monument to the 1943 ghetto uprising, and it is not a Holocaust museum. It covers a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland, working forwards through the market towns, the printing houses, the arguments and the politics, so that by the time the twentieth century arrives you know exactly what is being destroyed. Take the audio guide.

Then get on a bus south and change the subject completely. Łazienki was the private park of Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, and it is 76 hectares of lakes, follies and eighteenth century garden buildings with peacocks walking about in it as though they own the place.

The palace in the middle of the lake was his summer house and is the best of the buildings. On summer Sundays there are free Chopin recitals under the monument at the northern end, at noon and again at four, and half of Warsaw sits on the grass for them.

  1. 10:00

    POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

    Culture

    Eight galleries running from the first medieval traveller's account to the present day, standing where the ghetto was. Timed entry, so buy the ticket online, and set aside a full morning.

  2. 13:30

    Lunch before the park

    Eat

    Eat in the centre on the way south rather than at the park, where the options are a cafe and an ice cream kiosk.

  3. 14:30

    Łazienki Park

    Historic

    The last king's park: lakes, an amphitheatre built out into the water, an orangery and free-roaming peacocks. Free and open from dawn. Enter from the top gate on Ujazdowskie and walk down through it.

  4. 16:00

    Palace on the Isle

    Historic

    The king's summer villa, built out over the lake so that water runs on both sides of it. Ticketed and small, with the original interiors and a good collection of paintings. Closed on Mondays and worth the queue on any other day.

With more time: The Jewish cemetery on Okopowa, twenty minutes west, is one of the largest in Europe and almost entirely unrestored, with Esperanto's inventor and a symbolic grave for Janusz Korczak among the trees. In the other direction, the palace at Wilanów is a full baroque summer residence with formal gardens, half an hour south by bus.

Day 4 in Warsaw

Chopin by the river, and the last morning

Chopin left Warsaw at twenty and never came back, which has not stopped the city naming its airport, its benches and a good part of its tourism after him. The museum by the river is the serious version: manuscripts, letters, his last piano, and listening booths where you can sit with one nocturne for as long as you like.

His heart is in a pillar of the Church of the Holy Cross on the royal route, brought back from Paris in a jar of cognac by his sister and hidden in a country house through the war. The plaque is on the left as you go in, and people leave flowers.

If the train is later, walk down to the river. The whole west bank has been turned into a promenade of bars and beaches over the last fifteen years, and there is a ferry across to the wild side, which is genuinely wild: sand, willows and beavers, ten minutes from the middle of a capital city.

  1. 11:00

    Frederic Chopin Museum

    Culture

    Manuscripts, letters and the composer's last piano, arranged over four floors with listening rooms. Interactive to a fault and better for it if you have children. Opens late morning, closed Mondays, and concerts most weekends.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch in Powiśle

    Eat

    The strip below the escarpment between the museum and the river is full of small kitchens and coffee places, and it is a short tram ride from the central station.

With more time: With a whole last day rather than a morning, cross to Praga: the east bank was never demolished, so the tenements, the courtyard shrines and the pre-war brickwork are real. The collection of salvaged neon signs from the communist decades is over there too, in a converted factory, and the bar street behind the old vodka distillery is the best evening in the city.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Chopin airport is 8 km south of the centre and has a train and a bus into town, both cheap, both about twenty minutes. Modlin, 40 km north, takes the Ryanair and Wizz flights and needs a shuttle bus plus a regional train, so allow an hour and a quarter. The fast train from Kraków takes around 150 minutes and the one from Gdańsk a little under three hours.

The transport system is one ticket across metro, tram, bus and city rail, and 24 hour and 72 hour passes are sold at machines and in the jakdojade app, which is also the journey planner everybody actually uses. Two metro lines cross in the centre; the trams cover everything they miss.

The centre is walkable but spread out, and the distances are longer than they look on a map because the boulevards are wide and the blocks are big. Reckon on a tram ride between the old town, the museums in Wola and the parks in the south.

The two museums that matter

The Warsaw Rising Museum, in a former tram power station in Wola, covers the insurrection that began on 1 August 1944 and the reprisal that followed it. It is loud, dense, heavy on film and sound, and mostly assumes you know nothing, which is the right assumption. Bilingual throughout, and busy from mid-morning.

POLIN is the harder one to schedule: it needs three hours, it is busy at weekends and on its free day, and the ticket desk runs on timed entry that sells out by lunchtime in summer. Buy online. The audio guide is included in some tickets and worth having in all of them.

Doing both on the same day is possible and a mistake. Split them, and put something green between them.

Eating and drinking

Warsaw eats better than any other Polish city and charges less for it than Kraków does. The traditional end is pierogi, żurek, herring with vodka, duck with apples and pork knuckle; the modern end is a very good Vietnamese and Israeli scene, a serious speciality coffee culture, and more vegan restaurants per head than most European capitals.

The milk bars survive here too, subsidised canteens where a plate of potato pancakes costs less than a coffee across the street. They shut in the early evening and are worth a lunch. At the other end of the scale, the streets around Poznańska and Plac Zbawiciela are where the city goes out.

Two things to eat by name: a pączek, the Polish doughnut filled with rose jam, best from a bakery with a queue outside, and anything from the Wedel chocolate house, a Warsaw institution that has been making chocolate here since the nineteenth century. The drinking is vodka, still, and increasingly good craft beer.

When to come

May to September, and September is the pick of it: warm, dry and quieter than the summer. The free Chopin concerts in the park run on summer Sunday afternoons and are one of the best things the city does for nothing.

Winter is cold and dark and the museums are indoors, which makes it a reasonable time for a first visit if you dress for it. Anywhere between November and February you can expect grey skies and short days, and 1 August, whenever you are here, is worth knowing about: at five in the afternoon the sirens sound and the whole city stops where it stands.

Warsaw does not seduce anybody in the first hour. It gives you a wide grey junction, a Soviet skyscraper and a lot of traffic, and then over three days it explains itself: what stood here, what happened to it, who rebuilt it and what they were trying to prove.

Three nights is the right length for that. Give the mornings to the museums, the afternoons to the parks and the river, and one evening to the far bank, where none of it had to be rebuilt at all.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

How many days do you need in Warsaw?
Two days covers the old town and one of the big museums. Three nights lets you do both museums properly, spend an afternoon in the park and get across the river to Praga, which is where the city stops performing for visitors.
Is Warsaw worth visiting if I am already going to Kraków?
Yes, and the two are nothing like each other. Kraków is the beautiful medieval survivor; Warsaw is the rebuilt capital, with the better museums, the better food and the harder history. The train between them takes two and a half hours.
Is the Old Town real?
It is a reconstruction, built in the late 1940s and 1950s on the original street plan, using surviving fragments, photographs and eighteenth century paintings of the city. UNESCO listed it in 1980 precisely because of that. Nobody in Warsaw pretends otherwise.
Is Warsaw expensive?
Cheaper than western Europe and slightly cheaper than Kraków for food and drink, though hotel prices in the centre have caught up. Museums are inexpensive and several have a free day each week. Public transport is very cheap and a 72 hour pass covers the whole trip.
What is the best time to visit?
May to September, with September the best balance of weather and quiet. Summer Sundays bring the free Chopin concerts in Łazienki. Winter is cold and grey but the museums are all indoors and the city is at its emptiest.
Can I change the order of these days?
Yes. Copy it into a trip of your own and move things about. Keep POLIN and the Rising museum on separate days, and check the Monday closures before you fix anything: several of the museums here shut on different days of the week.