Explore Warsaw

The Palace of Culture and Science is a 237-metre high-rise in central Warsaw, designed by the Soviet architect Lev Rudnev and completed in 1955. The building houses theatres, a cinema, museums, a congress hall and the Polish Academy of Sciences; a viewing terrace on the 30th floor looks out over the city.

Highline Warsaw is the observation deck on the 53rd floor of Varso Tower, 230 metres above the street, opened in September 2025. The tower, designed by Foster + Partners, is the tallest building in the European Union. The deck has a 360° view of the city, a multimedia room with films on Warsaw's history and a garden bar on the 49th floor.

The National Museum in Warsaw was founded in 1862 as the Museum of Fine Arts and moved in 1938 into its modernist building on Jerusalem Avenue, designed by Tadeusz Tołwiński. Its collection of over 830,000 objects ranges from ancient art to Polish painting; the Faras Gallery shows wall paintings from a Nubian cathedral, and Jan Matejko's Battle of Grunwald hangs here.

Holy Cross Church is a Baroque church on Krakowskie Przedmieście, opposite the University of Warsaw, served by the Vincentian Fathers since 1653. An urn with the heart of Frédéric Chopin has been set in one of its pillars since 1882. Destroyed in 1944–45, the church was rebuilt by 1953; the statue of Christ carrying the cross stands on the front steps.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Piłsudski Square occupies the arcade that is the only surviving part of the Saxon Palace, destroyed in 1944. Since 1925 it has held the remains of an unidentified soldier who fell in the defence of Lwów, with urns of earth from battlefields. An eternal flame burns and a military guard is changed every full hour.

Copernicus Science Centre is a science museum on the bank of the Vistula, opened in 2010 in a building by the RAr-2 architects with a garden on its roof. Its galleries hold several hundred hands-on exhibits for carrying out experiments yourself, and it has laboratories, a robot theatre and the Heavens of Copernicus planetarium in a boulder-shaped building.

Castle Square is the triangular square in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, where the Royal Route begins, surrounded by historic townhouses. On its south-west side stands Sigismund's Column, erected in 1644 for King Sigismund III Vasa, who moved the capital from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596. The column was toppled in 1944 and re-erected in 1949.

The Royal Castle on Castle Square was the residence of Polish kings and the seat of the Sejm, where the Constitution of 3 May 1791 was adopted. Set on fire in 1939 and blown up by German forces in 1944, it was rebuilt in 1971–1984 and is now a museum with royal apartments, state rooms, views of Warsaw by Bernardo Bellotto and two paintings by Rembrandt.

The Warsaw Rising Museum is dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and opened on 31 July 2004, the 60th anniversary of its outbreak, in a former tram power station in the Wola district. Exhibits include weapons, armbands, letters and photographs, a replica B-24 Liberator bomber and a reconstructed sewer passage; a wall in the park bears the names of the fallen.

St. John's Archcathedral is the mother church of the Archdiocese of Warsaw, a Brick Gothic church on Świętojańska Street in the Old Town, first built in the 14th century. Blown up in 1944, it was rebuilt after the war in its Gothic form; the crypts hold the Dukes of Masovia, King Stanisław August Poniatowski, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

The Pleyel Salon is a small concert hall in a historic townhouse at Kanonia 20/22 in Warsaw's Old Town, a few steps from Castle Square, run by the Time for Chopin project. Pianists give a daily recital of Chopin's music on a restored Pleyel concert piano, the make Chopin preferred, with an interval in the middle.

The Old Town Market Square is the centre and oldest part of Warsaw's Old Town, laid out in the late 13th century and lined with tall burgher houses. German troops blew it up after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and it was rebuilt to its prewar appearance by 1953. A statue of the Warsaw Mermaid stands in the middle.

The Warsaw Barbican is a semicircular brick fortification on Nowomiejska Street between the Old and New Towns, built in 1540 to designs by Jan Baptist the Venetian to guard the city gate. Largely demolished in the 19th century and damaged in 1944, it was rebuilt in 1952–54. Visitors walk through its gate and along the reconstructed city walls.

Łazienki Park covers 76 hectares along the Royal Route in central Warsaw and was laid out for King Stanisław August Poniatowski from 1764. Its centrepiece is the neoclassical Palace on the Isle, rebuilt from a 17th-century bathing pavilion; the grounds also hold the Old Orangery with its court theatre, the Myślewicki Palace and the Chopin Monument.

The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and stands where the first armed clash of the uprising took place. Designed by Nathan Rapoport with architect Marek Suzin, it was unveiled in April 1948; its bronze reliefs show the ghetto fighters and the deportation of Jews. The POLIN Museum stands opposite.

POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews stands in Muranów, on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The building by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma opened in 2013; its core exhibition traces a thousand years of Jewish history in Poland in eight galleries, from the first settlers to the Holocaust and the post-war years.

Warsaw Zoo opened in 1928 on the right bank of the Vistula and covers about 40 hectares, with animals of some 500 species. During the Second World War the director Jan Żabiński and his wife Antonina hid Jews who had escaped the Warsaw Ghetto in their villa on the grounds, which can be visited; both are recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

The Polish Vodka Museum opened in 2018 in the former rectification building of the Koneser vodka factory in Praga, a brick building where spirit was purified from 1897 to 1970. Guided tours lead through four multimedia galleries on more than 500 years of vodka-making in Poland, from medieval distilling to bottles and labels of the last century, and end with a tasting.

Wilanów Palace was built between 1677 and 1696 as the summer residence of King John III Sobieski, to designs by Augustyn Wincenty Locci. The Baroque palace came through both world wars largely intact; its museum, opened to the public in 1805, shows royal apartments and paintings, and the palace stands in a park whose garden descends towards Wilanów Lake.