Warsaw | Poland’s Capital City, Map, & History (2024)

City site

Warsaw lies on the Vistula (Wisła) River, about 240 miles (386 km) southeast of the Baltic coast city of Gdańsk. It is situated in the middle of the Warsaw Plain, a glacier-formed basin that ranges from 250 to 380 feet (76 to 116 metres) above sea level. Divided into right- and left-bank portions by the river, the city extends about 18 miles from north to south and 16 miles from east to west. The river is some 3,900 feet (1,190 metres) wide at this point, although the riverbed has been artificially narrowed by embankment to a third of this width.

Climate

The climate is moderate and rather cool, the prevailing westerly winds bringing frequent changes of weather. The average yearly temperature is in the mid-40s F (about 8 °C), with a July average in the mid-60s F (about 19 °C) and a January average in the mid-20s F (about −3 °C). Yearly rainfall averages 21 inches (541 mm), most of which falls in the summer. Snow cover persists for 50 to 64 days a year.

City layout

The size of Warsaw reflects the historical fortunes of the city. From about 0.5 square mile (1.25 square km) in the 17th century, it expanded to 50 square miles (130 square km) by 1937 and, in the postwar period, to 172 square miles (445 square km) by 1957. Growth has continued since. The subdivision into seven districts—Śródmieście (the city’s centre), Żoliborz, Wola, Ochota, Mokotów, Praga-Południe (Praga South), and Praga-Północ (Praga North)—reflects centuries-old local names, but Warsaw is now virtually a new creation, with a layout that only partly resembles the historical city. The changes reflect a conscious planning of social and economic functions. Industries and warehouses are located on the outskirts or between modern housing developments; park areas have tripled in size; and streets, though still largely based on the old network, have been widened. The Old and New towns, Nowy Świat Avenue, and the city churches and palaces, on the other hand, have all been carefully reconstructed.

Warsaw possesses a wide variety of architectural monuments, whether as replicas or originals. In the Old Town, which was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1980, the Gothic St. John’s Cathedral and the red-brick fortifications known as the Barbican remain from the medieval period. The houses of the Old Town Market Square have been rebuilt in the splendour of their 15th-century style. There are many Baroque churches of the Counter-Reformation period, including the Jesuit Church next to the cathedral and the Church of the Holy Cross, which contains the heart of the Polish French composer Frédéric Chopin. The magnificently reconstructed Royal Castle, decorated in late 18th-century style, is on Zamkowy Square. Other royal and aristocratic palaces are at Łazienkowski Park and at John III Sobieski’s Wilanów. South of Łazienkowski Park is Belweder (Belvedere) Palace, a former presidential residence used now for ceremonial occasions. Remnants of the tsarist era are evident in the Church of St. Alexander in the middle of Trzech Krzyży Square and in the vast Alexander Citadel on the riverside, north of the New Town. The grandest of tsarist monuments, the colossal Orthodox Cathedral (1911), was demolished by the Polish government in the 1920s, but its symbolic role in the city has been assumed by the massive Palace of Culture and Science (1949), built by the Soviets south of the Old Town. The city’s modern architecture is generally regarded as undistinguished. Although the prewar garden suburbs of Żoliborz and Saska Kępa have survived, the vast sprawl of contemporary suburbia is made up in large part of seemingly endless expanses of uniform, prefabricated concrete apartment blocks.

Numerous historical monuments adorn Warsaw, some of which have been the object of political conflict. The postwar government was sensitive toward monuments and tended to discourage unapproved representations of people and events. For instance, the national shrine of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which contains the body of a Polish youth killed in the battle for Lwów in 1919, bears only inscriptions starting with the Spanish Civil War in 1937. There is an imposing monument unveiled in 1948 in the Muranȯw area honouring the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943), but not until 1989, the year in which Solidarity formed the country’s first noncommunist national government since World War II, was there a memorial honouring the Home Army, which fought the Germans in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky (Polish: Dzierżyński), founder of the Soviet security police, which stood on Saxon Square on the spot where Tsar Nicholas I had raised a statue to his loyalist Polish generals, was removed in 1990. Other monuments affected by politics include the Nicolaus Copernicus statue on Ulica (street) Krakowskie Przedmieṡcie, which was the object of struggles with the Nazi occupiers, and the statue of Chopin, in Łazienkowski Park, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940 but has been reconstructed.

Manufacturing and services

After 1948, when Poland’s communist government was established, the largest segment of the city’s labour force was employed by state-owned and cooperatively owned sectors of the national economy; manufacturing accounted for about one-third of the workers in the 1980s. Shortages of some consumer goods and food items were a problem, symbolized by the rather common sight of people standing in lines to buy goods. Electrical engineering; metallurgy (including the Warsaw steelworks); machine production (including automobile manufacturing); and toolmaking, chemical, printing, textile and clothing, and food enterprises long dominated the economy. Since the 1990s, however, following the collapse of communism, the economic structure of the city has changed rapidly. In particular, the role of services, notably banking and insurance, has grown. There are increasing numbers of new private-sector firms and foreign companies in the city as well. The Warsaw Stock Exchange was reopened in 1991.

Transportation

Warsaw is the hub of main rail, road, and air routes that are of importance to eastern Europe. Expressways have been built through the city along both banks of the Vistula River and in the form of a ring road through the inner suburbs. Motor traffic still shares the capital’s main streets with a surface tramway system. The city also began constructing an underground railway system in the 1990s. The Warsaw Frédéric Chopin Airport, with international and domestic service, is in Okęcie, south of the city centre.

Government

As the capital of the Republic of Poland, Warsaw houses all the central institutions of the national government as well as the residence of the Polish president (the Presidential Palace). The Sejm, Poland’s national legislature, is not far from the crossroads of Nowy Świat and Aleje Jerozolimskie. The government of Warsaw is run by the elected City Council, headed by a city president. Warsaw’s seven subdivisions also have their own elected legislatures. Until 1990 the city administration was only nominally elective and subject to the Warsaw Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, the country’s communist party. The city is also the administrative centre of the Mazowieckie województwo.

Municipal services and health

Like most large cities, Warsaw is continually expanding its infrastructure to keep pace with its growth. A postwar housing shortage was alleviated with prefabricated housing units, and housing construction in the suburbs and future planning have continued. As in many European countries, medical and health services are virtually free for all citizens. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and medical research facilities are widespread.

Education

Education in Warsaw benefits from the presence of the headquarters of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which coordinates research in both physical and social sciences through a number of institutes and industrial establishments. The Technical University of Warsaw and the University of Warsaw are notable institutions. Major libraries include the library (established in 1817) of the University of Warsaw and the National Library (1919); there are also a number of specialist libraries.