The Market Square (Rynek Starego Miasta) was laid out sometime in the late 13th or early 14th century, along the main road linking the castle with the New Town to the north.

In the early 1910s, Warsaw Old Town was the home of the prominent Yiddish writer Alter Kacyzne, who later depicted life there in his 1929 novel "שטאַרקע און שוואַכע" (Shtarke un Shvache, "The Strong and the Weak").

As depicted in the novel, the Old Town at that time was a slum neighborhood, with poor families—some Jewish, other Christian—living very crowded in subdivided tenements that had once been aristocrats' palaces.

In the late 1930s, during the mayoralty of Stefan Starzyński, the municipal authorities began refurbishing the Old Town and restoring it to its former glory.

During the Invasion of Poland (1939), much of the district was badly damaged by the German Luftwaffe, which targeted the city's residential areas and historic landmarks in a campaign of terror bombing.

Bernardo Bellotto's 18th-century vedute, as well as pre-World War II architecture students' drawings, were used as essential sources in the reconstruction effort; however, Bellotto's drawings had not been entirely immune to artistic licence and embellishment, and in some cases this was transferred to the reconstructed buildings.

[15] Here the representatives of guilds and merchants met in the Town Hall (built before 1429, pulled down in 1817), and fairs and the occasional execution were held.

[16] Castle Square (plac Zamkowy) is a visitor's first view of the reconstructed Old Town, when approaching from the more modern center of Warsaw.

[18] In the middle of the square, is the bronze bell of Warsaw, that Grand Crown Treasurer Jan Mikołaj Daniłowicz, founded in 1646 for the Jesuit Church in Jarosław.

In 1980, Warsaw's Old Town was placed on the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites as "an outstanding example of a near-total reconstruction of a span of history covering the 13th to the 20th century.