46 Fun Facts About Warsaw

Warsaw's river flows north across Poland into which sea?

The Baltic Sea: for centuries Poland's grain was floated down Warsaw's river to the port of Gdańsk at its mouth and shipped out across the sea.

Warsaw is the capital of which voivodeship?

Masovian: the region was a separate duchy with Warsaw as its seat until the ducal line died out in 1526, when the Polish crown absorbed it.

Which king moved the Polish court and capital from Kraków to Warsaw?

Sigismund III Vasa began remodelling Warsaw's castle in 1596 and had settled his court there by 1611: the city lay between Kraków and Vilnius, the capitals of the Commonwealth's two halves.

What mythical creature appears on Warsaw's coat of arms?

A mermaid, the syrenka: in one legend she led a prince to the spot and told him to found a city there, and the arms show her with a sword and shield in hand.

Which Warsaw district lies on the east bank of the river?

Praga is Warsaw's historic district on the river's east bank, facing the Old Town; it kept much of its pre-war tenement housing because it escaped the 1944 destruction of the left bank.

What is a native of Warsaw called in English?

Varsovian is built on Varsovia, the city's Latin name, rather than on the English 'Warsaw'; the same root names the varsovienne, a ballroom dance on a mazurka step.

Which queen was accused of poisoning Warsaw's last duke, Janusz III, in 1526?

Bona Sforza, Poland's Italian-born queen, was blamed by rumour because the young duke's lands fell to the crown when he died without an heir; the king's own inquiry found no foul play.

What did the 1573 Warsaw Confederation formally establish in the Commonwealth?

Religious freedom: with the throne empty, nobles of rival faiths pledged to keep the peace over religion, and the pledge went into the oath every later king had to swear before he could reign.

Which two powers beat a larger Polish-Lithuanian army near Warsaw in July 1656?

Sweden and Brandenburg, led by Charles X Gustav and Elector Frederick William, beat John II Casimir's larger Polish-Lithuanian army in the three-day Battle of Warsaw of 28–30 July 1656, a win that gained them little.

Which power annexed Warsaw in the final partition of Poland in 1795?

Warsaw became capital of the province of South Prussia until Napoleon arrived.

Which exiled French king lived in Warsaw under the alias Comte de Lille?

Louis XVIII, then only a claimant in exile, refused Napoleon's bid to make him give up his claim to the crown; he reached the French throne a decade later.

Which German cipher machine did Polish mathematicians first break in Warsaw in 1932?

Enigma: Marian Rejewski worked out its wiring at the Cipher Bureau, and five weeks before the war the Poles handed their methods to British and French codebreakers at a meeting just outside Warsaw.

In the 1897 census, where did Warsaw rank among the cities of the Russian Empire by population?

Third: only St Petersburg and Moscow counted more people, so a Polish city outranked every other city in the tsar's empire, Odessa and Kiev included.

The 1920 Battle of Warsaw against the Red Army is known by what nickname?

The Miracle on the Vistula was coined ironically by the publicist Stanisław Stroński, who doubted the army's leadership; the phrase stuck as a badge of honour for the August 1920 victory.

Who commanded the Polish counterattack from the south on 16 August 1920?

Józef Piłsudski personally led the strike group that attacked from the Wieprz River on 16 August 1920, hitting the Red Army's flank and forcing a disorganised Soviet retreat.

Which Warsaw Ghetto orphanage director refused to escape without his children?

Janusz Korczak, a doctor who wrote under that pen name, turned down friends' pleas to flee and went with his orphans when the whole home was deported to its death in August 1942.

To which extermination camp were most Warsaw Ghetto Jews deported in 1942?

Treblinka: more than a quarter of a million people were sent there from the ghetto in the summer of 1942, packed into trains under the pretence of 'resettlement in the East'.

Which chancellor knelt in 1970 before Warsaw's memorial to the 1943 Ghetto Uprising?

Willy Brandt sank to his knees after laying a wreath, a silent gesture of humility that was photographed around the world; he won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

What sounds across Warsaw at 5 pm each 1 August, the Uprising's anniversary?

Sirens: at 'W-Hour' the alarms wail and trams, cars and people on the pavements stop where they are for a minute, in tribute to the insurgents who fought for 63 days.

Which Polish underground force led the 1944 Warsaw Uprising?

The Home Army, loyal to Poland's government-in-exile in London, rose on 1 August 1944 hoping to free the capital itself before the advancing Red Army could install an administration of its own.

How did Warsaw Uprising fighters slip between districts cut off by German lines in 1944?

Through the sewers: they were the main link between the insurgent districts, and thousands of people left the Old Town through them when it fell, the story told in Andrzej Wajda's film Kanał.

Which Oscar-winning 2002 film follows Władysław Szpilman's survival in the ruins of wartime Warsaw?

The Pianist: late in the film a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, finds Szpilman hiding in the ruins and helps him survive instead of handing him over, as happened in life.

Which city became Poland's transitional seat of government while Warsaw lay in ruins?

Łódź, largely undamaged in the war, housed much of Poland's government and cultural life in 1945 while Warsaw was being rebuilt; Warsaw nonetheless remained the official capital.

The Palace of Culture and Science was a gift from which country?

The Soviet Union built the palace in the early 1950s as a 'gift of the Soviet people'; it was originally named after Joseph Stalin, a dedication dropped during destalinisation.

Which band's 1967 shows at Warsaw's Palace of Culture were among the first by a Western rock act behind the Iron Curtain?

The Rolling Stones played two shows in the palace's Congress Hall on 13 April 1967; the audience had been warned to behave, and a riot broke out all the same.

What world record did Warsaw's Palace of Culture hold from the millennium celebrations until 2002?

The four clock faces added for the millennium made the palace the world's tallest clock tower; the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building in Tokyo took that record in 2002.

Warsaw's Old Town is on UNESCO's World Heritage list as an outstanding example of what?

Near-total reconstruction: more than 85% of the historic centre was destroyed in 1944, and its citizens rebuilt it within a few years, working from records that included Bernardo Bellotto's 18th-century views.

How was the 1970s rebuilding of Warsaw's Royal Castle mostly paid for?

Public donations: the decision to rebuild was put off again and again until 1971, when it was agreed to do it from voluntary gifts, collected by committees in Poland and abroad.

The bronze king on the column in Warsaw's Castle Square holds a cross in one hand and which weapon in the other?

A sabre: German troops brought the column down in 1944, but the bronze king survived the fall and in 1949 was set up again, cross and sabre in hand, on a new granite shaft.

Wilanów Palace was built for which Polish king?

Wilanów Palace was built for John III Sobieski between 1677 and 1696 as a summer residence; it survived both world wars largely intact, unlike most of Warsaw's palaces.

Where in Warsaw are free summer Chopin concerts held at his monument?

Free Sunday recitals are played each summer beside Wacław Szymanowski's Chopin monument in Łazienki Park; the statue was designed in 1907 for the 1910 centenary but, delayed by controversy and World War I, went up only in 1926.

Where in Warsaw is Frédéric Chopin's heart sealed?

Holy Cross Church keeps the heart sealed in a pillar: at Chopin's own request his sister Ludwika carried it home from Paris preserved in alcohol, while his body stayed in a Paris cemetery.

Which Nobel-winning scientist was born in Warsaw's New Town?

Marie Curie was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw in 1867, when Poland was missing from the map of Europe, and she named polonium, an element she discovered, after her homeland.

Warsaw's Varso Tower became the EU's tallest building in 2021, replacing a tower in which city?

Frankfurt: its Commerzbank Tower had only just regained the title, when Brexit took London's Shard off the European Union's list, and lost it to Warsaw the following year.

Which architect's practice designed Warsaw's Varso Tower, completed in 2022?

Norman Foster's practice designed Varso Tower, which owes its record height to an 80-metre spire: its roof, at 230 metres, sits lower than the top of the Palace of Culture nearby.

Until its 1991 collapse, the Warsaw radio mast held what world record?

The 646-metre Warsaw radio mast at Konstantynów was the world's tallest structure from 1974 until it collapsed on 8 August 1991; the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota then regained the title.

Which tournament's opening match was played at Warsaw's National Stadium?

UEFA Euro 2012 opened here with Poland's 1-1 draw against Greece: Robert Lewandowski scored the tournament's first goal, and each side finished with a man sent off.

POLIN, the Hebrew word that names Warsaw's museum of Jewish history, can be read as 'Poland' or as which phrase?

Rest here: the museum takes its name from a legend about the first Jews to reach Poland, who are said to have read the country's Hebrew name as an invitation to stay.

Warsaw's riverside science centre, opened in 2010, is named after which scientist?

Nicolaus Copernicus also has a statue in the city centre; when the German occupiers fixed their own plaque to it, a young Scout leader removed it in February 1942, a famous act of 'minor sabotage'.

The Warsaw Pact was signed in May 1955, days after which country joined NATO?

West Germany entered NATO that month, and Moscow answered within days by binding itself and seven allies into a rival alliance, signed in the Polish capital on 14 May.

Which of its own member states did Warsaw Pact armies invade in August 1968?

Czechoslovakia: the tanks came to end the Prague Spring reforms in the pact's largest operation, and Albania quit the alliance over it.

Which EU border agency is headquartered in Warsaw?

Frontex, seated in Warsaw, was turned into a full border and coast guard agency after the migration crisis of 2015 and now fields a standing corps, the European Union's first uniformed service.

Which Polish movement was founded in 1980, a year after Pope John Paul II's vast open-air Mass in Warsaw?

Solidarity: a vast crowd filled what was then Victory Square for the Mass on 2 June 1979, and the shipyard strikes that produced the free trade union came fourteen months later.

Which invented language was created by Ludwik Zamenhof, an eye doctor who lived and died in Warsaw?

Esperanto: he published it in 1887 under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto, 'one who hopes', and early users liked the pseudonym so much that it became the name of the language.

Which monument stands in the surviving fragment of Warsaw's Saxon Palace?

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, set in the palace colonnade since 1925, was the one section left standing when the Germans destroyed the building; the Saxon Garden behind it has been open to the public since 1727.

Which English post-punk band performed as Warsaw before renaming itself in 1978?

Joy Division took the name Warsaw from David Bowie's instrumental 'Warszawa', then dropped it in early 1978 to avoid confusion with a London punk band called Warsaw Pakt.