Worth a Detour
Old Town Market Square
The painted burghers' houses of the rebuilt Old Town, around the bronze Mermaid of Warsaw.
- Open
- Always
- Price
- Free; paid for the museum
- Time Needed
- 1 hour
- Address
- Rynek Starego Miasta, 00-272 WarsawDirections
- Getting There
- A short walk from Castle Square; buses and trams stop at Plac Zamkowy.
Why Go
German troops destroyed nearly all of the Old Town in 1944. Architects rebuilt it in the late 1940s and 1950s using prewar photographs, drawings and Canaletto's 18th-century paintings of the city, and UNESCO listed it in 1980 as a model of reconstruction.
The Museum of Warsaw, in a row of houses on the north side, tells the city's story, and the Mermaid, the city's symbol, stands in the middle.
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