Warsaw is a shy city. It is one that has successfully escaped the attention given to other, often less exciting, European capitals; the disordered architectural styles piled on each other throughout decades of postwar reconstruction often obscure, rather than flaunt, the city’s charms. There is no centre in the traditional sense; rather, Warsaw is a collection of districts, each with its own personality and purpose.
The first-time visitor’s reflex is often to begin with a walk through the Old Town. This neighbourhood is Warsaw’s wonderful deception – a painstaking recreation of the original, following its near-total destruction in 1944, intended to serve as an affirmation of Polish identity in the years after the war. In 1980 it was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. Often referred to as a phoenix, Warsaw has been reborn repeatedly throughout history. This idea is particularly tangible while standing in the centre of the charming Market Place that, despite its medieval allure, dates back only to the 1950s.
This reenactment of a classic old European town is certainly aesthetically successful, but it’s the new contemporary culture that has Warsaw buzzing. And it is definitely buzzing. Following years of repressive government interference, museums are reclaiming their vigour and the contemporary art galleries are flourishing, thanks to a thriving artist community and the collectors supporting them. The weight and trauma of its history – for decades taboo – is lately being processed with clarity and courage by postwar generations of Varsovians.
Duck into a courtyard. There, hidden from street view, is a 19th-century palace, now home to one of the most engaged of the city’s contemporary galleries, Gunia Nowik. The entire ground floor of the palace pulsates as a crowd forms inside to see Huk, a performance piece by Paweł Sakowicz that references Eternal Machine, Iza Tarasewicz’s exhibition recently on view in the gallery. Amid Tarasewicz’s galvanised and rusted steel sculptures, swaying like mobiles from the gallery ceiling, three performers mimic a traditional Polish dance while also pulling from a rave-club vocabulary of movement. The space is packed.
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“What distinguishes Warsaw these days is its constant and multifaceted transformation,” Nowik tells me, after the performance. “I grew up in post-communist Poland, but had the opportunity to get an education and work experience abroad, and came back to Warsaw to build something new. Everything we see and experience in this expanded cultural landscape has emerged in the past years, thanks to the big input of my contemporaries – their galleries, restaurants, fashion activities, publishing houses or craft. And it continues to evolve.”
Warsaw’s effervescence pervades its neighbourhoods, the restaurants and bars packed with artists, architects, writers, designers, filmmakers and chefs who all greet one another as friends. Many have lived and worked abroad and come back, choosing Warsaw over London or Berlin. “What drew me back to Poland was this strong urge to reconnect with my roots – my ancestors, folklore, the natural world and the material landscape that shaped me,” says furniture designer Marcin Rusak. He’s speaking from Świdno Palace, the 18th-century villa that has become his showcase and laboratory for material experimentation. In Rusak’s work, natural elements – often flowers – are immortalised in metal, glass, resin or biomaterial destined to decompose. He says it “reflects on what is worth preserving and what should be allowed to decay and disappear. I think this perspective comes from my upbringing during Poland’s shift from communism to early capitalism – a time of profound transformation.”
“Warsaw has an unapologetic vibe with its post-communist past and the capitalist rush toward the future,” says fashion designer Ania Kuczyńska. Her seasonless approach and stern monochrome palette perfectly encapsulate the cool intellectual restraint of the city’s aesthetics. “Warsaw is full of contradictions, layered with stories, and constantly fascinating. It has this powerful energy, something resilient and intense that you feel just walking down the streets.”
But Warsaw is not a show-off; it demands a bit of effort. Architectural gems are hidden in courtyards or nestled into tree-lined residential streets and parks. The elegant neighbourhoods of Mokotów and Saska Kępa guard prewar modernist masterpieces with discreet grey façades. Praga, once considered dangerous, is now hip, offering a glimpse of what the city looked like before the war. Contemporary buildings punctuate the city centre, such as the Diener & Diener-designed Foksal Gallery Foundation, which offers privileged views onto the ultra-modern city skyline.
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Unlike other European capitals, Warsaw’s (dare I say glamorous?) skyline rises from the centre of the city, not its outskirts. Broad avenues frame open views of glittering high-rises and communist-era housing estates, now jostling for space with ultra-modern skyscrapers designed by Foster + Partners or Daniel Libeskind. These new glass towers have all risen around the massive Palace of Culture and Science. For decades following its completion in 1955, this “gift” from Joseph Stalin dominated the cityscape. The building and Plac Defilad, the square from which it rises, occupy a complex and emotionally charged space in the Polish psyche. The building itself is spectacular, its base adorned with colourful neon signs for the theatre and cinema, its illuminated façade visible throughout the city. It remains a monument to a painful era, and has been the site of protest, revolt, repression – and now renewal.
The massive windows of the Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej (MSN) – Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art – now provide the most sweeping and symbolic views over the Palace of Culture and the Plac Defilad. The long-awaited permanent home for the most important contemporary art institution in Poland, it is the concentrated expression of a new Warsaw, providing the cultural and geographical centre that, until now, the city has lacked. They are emotions that “can only be processed by contemporary art”, Andrzej Przywara, the founder of Foksal Gallery Foundation, tells me, as we stand in the cold early evening gazing onto the modern city.
“The location of our building itself is important,” explains the museum’s director, Joanna Mytkowska. “In the very centre of Warsaw on Plac Defilad we managed to put up a building that is a counterweight to the Palace of Culture and Science – and to the values behind it, as well as its references to the Soviet history and past.” The new premises have spearheaded the revitalisation of the centre of the capital “to become a welcoming piece of the city… a new frame for a largely young, egalitarian, democratic culture”.
The MSN was designed by the American architect Thomas Phifer who, unweighted by historical baggage, conceived the building for the Warsaw of the future. “The vivid intellectual and artistic life and the tradition of social engagement are very much rooted here,” says Mytkowska. “Today this tradition mixes with a massive development of a multicultural metropolis and the new cultural migration, especially from Ukraine.”
There is a unique beauty here in winter. Night comes early, and with it a dense fog – or, with luck, snow. The mist is pierced by retro avant-garde neon signs, often animated. While many of these are relics from a mid-20th-century “neonisation” programme under communism, they are now joined by contemporary ones, and even a museum dedicated to their place in the city’s visual culture. A neon boy rides a zebra atop the E Wedel chocolate shop in Szpitalna; a red chimney lets out puffs of white smoke on the side of the U Szwejka restaurant, and fingers release a cherry onto a cake at a Lukullus patisserie. The most iconic is the Siatkarka – a female volleyball player leaping up to hit a ball that then bounces down the side of a building on Constitution Square. Created in 1961 by Jan Mucharski, it was restored in 2006 by the contemporary artist Paulina Ołowska.
Just behind the elegant Hotel Bristol, in Dom Spotkań z Historią (the History Meeting House), there is currently an exhibition of works by Romuald Broniarek, a photographer who produced state-approved images for a communist propaganda weekly. This association rendered his work untouchable for many years until publisher and curator Filip Niedenthal, together with the photographer’s great-niece, Kasia Broniarek, gained access to his unpublished archive. Broniarek’s snapshots of everyday life are grippingly personal; many feature the newly built Palace of Culture standing as a backdrop to celebratory parades of Polish youth or robust athletes. “We don’t want to whitewash the past. But Broniarek’s documentation of everyday life across four decades, from the early ’50s to the late ’80s, speaks for itself,” says Niedenthal. “And we’re constantly surprised at how foreign – exotic even – this recent past is to today’s teens and 20-year-olds.”
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Last year, Sonia Jakimczyk moved her gallery, Import Export, into a space with elegant bay windows, looking onto an imposing neoclassical government building that housed the Gestapo headquarters during the war. She recently showed the work of Sofia Alice Ginevra Gianné, alias SAGG Napoli, the artist who collaborated with Maria Grazia Chiuri for the Dior SS25 show in Paris, alongside work by the interwar avant-garde artist Teresa Żarnower.
“Warsaw has a conflicted personality,” Jakimczyk says. “While the city is increasingly wealthy, safe, clean and efficient, Varsovians enjoy an element of unruliness. We want to preserve our own chaotic way of doing things.” We’re having lunch at MOD Oleandrów 8, a doughnut shop that reveals its true identity at midday when it morphs into a bistro with one of the most exciting menus in the city. (Its boeuf bourguignon-filled dumplings are reason alone to visit Warsaw.)
That evening, sitting in a taxi, en route to a dinner of herring, steak tartare and vodka at Gessler, the very scene-y Warsaw bastion of classic Polish cuisine, I speed through the strange patchwork of this city I seem to have fallen in love with. “There’s no easy charm here but Warsaw doesn’t try to be easy,” says Ania Kuczyńska, squeezing lemon onto warm blinis. “It’s complex, a bit stubborn and unforgettable.” I’ll drink to that, I say. She laughs and raises her glass: “Na zdrowie.”
How to spend it in Warsaw…
Stay
Hotel Bristol, a Luxury Collection Hotel, was constructed in 1901 and miraculously survived destruction in the second world war. Its Café Bristol is a favourite of Varsovians who visit throughout the day for breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea. @hotelbristolwarsaw
Raffles Europejski Warsaw (above), known as Hotel Europejski, which predates the Bristol, was the city’s most luxurious and modern hotel at the turn of the century. Heavily damaged during the second world war, it now dazzles with fine dining and luxury shopping (including an Hermès boutique at ground level). @raffleseuropejski
The iconic art deco façade of Hotel Warszawa has been a landmark since it was commissioned as the building of the British company Prudential Insurance. A radical renovation of the subsequent hotel in 2010 gutted its socialist-realist interiors, leaving a five-star hotel in their place. Szóstka restaurant on the sixth floor has great views. @hotel_warszawa
The Polish hotel group Puro has two locations in Warsaw, the centre (above) and the Old Town (opening early 2025). Its Nordic-infused art and design makes it a favourite of a younger crowd, as do the bars, gift shops, spas and online magazine. @purohotels
Shop
Zofia Chylak’s eponymous brand of fine leather bags and shoes is grounded in traditional Polish heritage; her magazine, Żurnal, gives an exclusive insight into contemporary Poland. @chylak.bags
One of Poland’s most influential designers for more than 20 years, Ania Kuczyńska specialises in a cool, mostly black womenswear that is the ultimate Warsaw wardrobe. @aniakuczynska
Make an appointment to visit Grôpk studio (above), the atelier of ceramist Marcin Kuberna, whose work is influenced by his roots in the Kaszuby region of northern Poland. @gropk.ceramics
Objekt gallery exhibits (and sells) the work of some of Poland’s most exciting designers and craftspeople. @objekt_gallery
On the market square in the Old Town is House of Polish Folk Art, the source for traditional craft: ceramics, tableware, fabrics, handpainted Easter eggs and charming folk art. @polishfolkart
Eat & Drink
MOD Oleandrów 8 opens each morning as a coffee shop serving its famous fresh doughnuts, then at midday it transforms into a ramen shop with an exquisite French-Asian menu and natural-wine selection. @modoleandrow8
Przegryź on Mokotwska Street (which houses many designer shops and studios) is packed with the local crowd and shoppers on the weekends. The authentic home cooking – chicken noodle soup, pierogi, pork with beets and mash – keeps it top of every Varsovian’s list. @przegryz_bistro
Peaches in the Praga district stands out as best in class of a new vegan scene (above). The produce is worked with precision and presented with elegance, as are the cocktails and an exciting wine list. @peaches_gastrogirls
Wódka Gessler Na Widelcu – known locally as “Gessler” – is a fun, festive, scene-y Warsaw landmark serving traditional Polish cuisine usually accompanied by (lots of) vodka. @wodka_gessler_na_widelcu
The jewel box-like Opasły Tom (above) serves contemporary Polish cuisine. Its name, “thick volume”, references the bookshop that was its original location, and there’s a “reading room” at the current bar, with books and cocktails. The owners run a farmers’ market at Forteca every Wednesday. @opaslytom.kregliccy
With seven locations across Warsaw, each designed by a different architect, Lukullus patisserie’s window displays are elaborate installations. The pastries, cakes, cookies and ice-cream are packaged in iconic canary-yellow boxes. @lukullus_warszawa
Bar Rascal (above), an immensely popular destination with a chic interior, deserves the credibility it commands on the European natural-wine bar
scene. @bar.rascal
Model, Małgosia Bela at Viva. Hair, Daniel Gryszke at Division Talent using Schwarzkopf Professional. Make-up, Marianna Yurkiewicz. Digital operator, Mateusz Skraba. Photographer’s assistants, Kuba Krysiak and Mateusz Śnieciński at Pin Up Studio. Fashion assistants, Paulina Tarnowicz (on set), Anne Elizabeth Voortmeijer and Aylin Bayhan. Production, Vlad Mykhnyuk. Production coordinator, Filip Jakoniuk. Special thanks to Filip Niedenthal, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Hotel Warszawa, and Lukullus and Wódka Gessler na Widelcu
