Warsaw was just a stopping point for us on the way to Krakow. As such, I only had a few hours to explore one Poland’s most populous city. Warsaw, Poland Photo Essay
It was a cold late-October morning that I wandered around Warsaw. While the morning started with sunlight and only scattered clouds, those clouds became more ominous and the sky darker as the morning went on. Rain was approaching.
I thought about putting a black and white filter on all the photographs below because the city felt a little depressing…the biting cold, but also the silence. Most great cities bustle with noise, but the great city of Warsaw was very quiet on this Saturday morning. The juxtaposition was particularly stark to Krakow, which I would drive to later that day.
Like in Moscow, some roads are crossed underground with shops lining the passage. Here, most shops were closed (as in empty, not just closed for the weekend).
Even the Metro station was quiet.
The point of my walk was to visit the Palace of Culture, that iconic skyscraper in the heart of the city with Soviet Realism (it resembles the “Seven Sisters” in Moscow). It was a gift to Poland from Josef Stalin.
It’s a beautiful building and I enjoyed looking at all the Soviet-era cars parked outside and walking through the ornate lobby inside.
Warsaw has a graffiti problem. It’s hardly unique in that respect, but it always strikes me as odd that so many European cities choose to leave up graffiti instead of painting it over. This wasn’t Banksy quality.
See, the point of our journey was to go to Krakow, not Warsaw, so I must leave the Polish capital city on my list of places to return to. 24 hours is not enough to explore the nooks and crannies of this great city and I don’t claim to have “explored” the city…just took a long walk through part of the city.
I’d welcome your thoughts on what I should see next time, though.
Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.
Most residents of Warsaw, I am told, dislike the Ministry of Culture Building. They liken it to a raised middle finger from Stalin to the Polish people.
Seems that most would go to Old Town – I thought I’d go in a different direction.
It’s not Ministry of Culture! 🙂
It is called Palace of Culture and Science and it was indeed a “gift” from Stalin, however it isn’t and never was the building of the Ministry of Culture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science
If you really want to know how the Poles feel about Stalin, visit the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk. Poland was invaded by both the Nazi and Russia in 1939. If in doubt, note how Poland was willing to lend its MIG jet fighters to Ukraine during the February invasion. Sleepy Joe put an end to that plan because he would not backfill the Polish with US jets.
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