Our hotel Sofitel is extremely well situated near the university and within walking distance to the old town and public transport.
We started our day by joining another free walking tour of the Old Town of Warsaw which has history going back 700 years.
It is absolutely mind boggling to be in the Market Square, view the old city walls, the palace and the other buildings and to know that it was all completely reconstructed after World War II – starting in 1946 until the mid-50’s.
For the most part the rebuild was funded by voluntary contributions and money collected from polish citizens through taxes. The national motto was “The entire nation builds its capital”.
The buildings were rebuilt based on a painting by Canaletto and also thanks to blueprints that were created by architecture students in 1939 and smuggled out of Poland for safe-keeping. It was recreated with such attention to detail that it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Today, the Old Town is a charmingly cosy area. A statue of the Warsaw Mermaid, holding a shield and wielding a sword, the city’s symbol, stands proudly in the center of Market Square.
We strolled through a small part of the Warsaw ghetto – established in 1940, and the largest ghetto in all of Europe with a population of 450,000.
The city transportation is extremely easy to use and we caught a bus from the Warsaw Uprising Monument to the Uprising museum which has three floors of interactive displays paying tribute to the bravery of the members of the Polish Home Army and all other citizens who took part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against German occupation which lasted for 63 days.
We caught the metro back to the hotel.
