Architecture of Warsaw

The city has wonderful examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque and neoclassical periods, all of which are located within easy walking distance of the town centre.

The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of Baryczko merchant family (1562), building called "The Negro" (early 17th century) and Salwator tenement (1632).

The unique character of Warsaw Baroque, which gradually influenced the architecture of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a mixture of local traditions with Western European patterns.

Late Baroque architecture with palaces merging Polish mansions of the aristocracy with side towers, Italian suburban villa and a French palace entre cour et jardin (between court and garden) with two oblong wings on each side of the cour d'honneur,[2] funeral chapels, modelled after Sigismund's Chapel and attached to the church as well as Greek-cross plan churches, are present in Warsaw.

Exceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war (like mentioned Kronenberg Palace and Insurance Company Rosja building) or they were rebuilt in socialist realism style (like Warsaw Philharmony edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris).

[9] The workers' estates were Ochota and Rakowiec, Koło (north-western part of Wola), Grochów (the centre of Praga Południe), Żoliborz.

The villas' estates – Higher Mokotów (there lived President Starzyński), Czerniaków (north of Wilanów), Saska Kępa (between Poniatowski and Łazienkowski bridges) as well as Żoliborz.

[10] The central part of the right-bank (east) Praga borough it is a place where very run-down houses stand right next to modern apartment buildings and shopping malls.

[11] The greatest are: Ursynów-Natolin, Bródno, Wawrzyszew (close to the Steel Industry), Bemowo, Gocław (at the right bank, between Łazienkowski and Siekierkowski bridges), Stegny (north-west of Wilanów), Tarchomin (north of Toruńska Road).

Modern architecture in Warsaw is represented by the Metropolitan Office Building at Pilsudski Square by Lord Foster,[12] Warsaw University Library (BUW) by Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski, featuring a garden on its roof and view of the Vistula River, Rondo 1 office building by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Golden Terraces, consisting of seven overlapping domes retail and business centre and skyscraper Złota 44 by Daniel Libeskind.

The dome of the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Warsaw-Czerniaków, with profuse frescoes and stucco decorations, was constructed in 1690–1693.
The Classical rotunda of the Holy Trinity Evangelical Church was constructed in 1777–1782.
Warsaw Philharmony edifice in 1918. The building was destroyed in a German air raid on Warsaw in 1939 and it was rebuilt after the war in the socialist realism style. [ 6 ]
Former buildings of the Supreme Chamber of Control by Marek Leykam were constructed in 1947–1948.
Modern skyscrapers, Skyliner (left), and Warsaw Unit (right)