Praga Warsaw walking tour: the east bank the war spared

Cross the Vistula and the city changes. A Praga Warsaw walking tour takes you into the old town on the right bank, which stayed separate from Warsaw until 1791.⁵ Its name comes from a roasted, or burnt, forest.⁶ From the beginning it was a trading district that supplied the left bank, a character shaped by its large Jewish merchant community.⁷ The streets still feel more like a working town than a capital: low tenements, shop signs, courtyards and tram lines.

Above all, Praga is old in a way the Old Town is not. Unlike the left bank, the district almost escaped destruction in the Second World War and so kept its pre-war buildings and character.¹ The tourist office is frank about the darker chapters. In 1940, after the Jews were forced into the ghetto, their empty houses were taken over by poor families.⁸ After the war the district was neglected, crime was high, and for years it had a worse reputation than the other bank.⁹

That reputation, the tourist office says, now belongs to the past, and Praga draws visitors with its time-worn townhouses, original eateries and slower pace.¹⁰ The British newspaper The Independent even ranked it among the 10 coolest and most promising neighborhoods in Europe.¹¹ Listen to older residents: the local Warsaw dialect survives best here.¹² This guide walks Old Praga first, then the factory streets of Szmulowizna and the film sets of Nowa Praga, all marked on the Praga map panel.

Start on Wileński Square, where an Orthodox cathedral, the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene, towers over the junction. It was built between 1867 and 1869 and takes its design from the churches of Kyiv.¹⁴ Time your visit for midday, when the historic Władysław IV High School plays the old Praga song Chodź na Pragie, Come to Praga, as it does daily.³⁵ Along Kłopotowskiego Street is the Monument to the Praga Backyard Band, the street musicians who played such songs.³⁶

A short walk away, at 14 Floriańska Street, the Rusałka milk bar has kept its service and decor unchanged for years, wood paneling and checkered oilcloths included.²⁶ Right next door rises St Florian's, the neo-Gothic cathedral dedicated to St Michael the Archangel and St Florian the Martyr, which dates from the turn of the 20th century.³⁷ Its tall spires are easy to spot from the side streets, which makes the church a useful compass point when you lose your bearings among the tenements.

Back near the band monument, the Kino Praha cinema has 12 bas-reliefs on its facade, each showing a well-known Polish actor linked to Warsaw.³⁸ Toward the river, at Kłopotowskiego 1/3, stands a classicist building by Antonio Corazzi, put up in 1824 as the toll house for the bridge to the Old Town; look for Neptune carved on the facade.³⁹ These small finds are the point of Praga: the district rewards slow walking more than ticking off sights.

The Różycki open-air market opened in 1882, and a few stalls still trade.¹⁵ During the war it was a black market, and after it, in the shortages of the 1970s and 1980s, it flourished again.⁸⁰ Today it is more legend than shopping trip, but the old gate and the stalls are worth a look. Turn from Targowa into Ząbkowska Street, the district's main drag for food and drink, where old townhouses hold cult pubs such as W Oparach Absurdu and Łysy Pingwin.⁹³

For lunch, try a milk-bar classic at Bar Ząbkowski, where Ząbkowska meets Targowa.⁹³ The dumplings and tripe once sold straight from the pot at the bazaar now come served from a jar at Pyzy Flaki Gorące, 29/30 Brzeska Street.²⁸ On Brzeska, at number 21, look up for the painted sign of the tailor Moszek Szatz, who served Praga residents in the 1930s.⁸⁹ Old painted signs like this one are easy to miss, so walk with your eyes above the shop windows.

Then step through the gateways. In almost every courtyard on Ząbkowska and Brzeska you will find a small shrine, built during the German occupation as a place of prayer and comfort; around 100 of them survive in Praga.³ They are places of prayer, so be discreet with your camera. At 13 Ząbkowska Street, a courtyard from around 1870 keeps a wooden gallery that leads to the first-floor flats.²⁷ Courtyards are private spaces: look from the gate, keep your voice down and leave if anyone asks.

North of Wileński Square lies Nowa Praga, which dates from 1860, when the entrepreneur Ksawery Konopacki bought the wasteland next to Old Praga.⁹⁸ On Inżynierska Street a pre-war tram depot stands where the city's first horse-drawn tram set off in 1866.⁹⁹ Stalowa Street, nearby, looks almost as it did before the war and has served as a film set many times; Roman Polański shot The Pianist here.³⁴ Walk it slowly and you will recognize scenes.

On Środkowa Street, number 9, from 1879, is the other wooden house still standing in Praga.^100,101 Across the road, on the building at number 17, is one of the capital's most striking murals, Fight Club by Conor Harrington.³⁰ For a drink afterward, the courtyard at 22 on 11 Listopada Street holds bars such as Chmury, Hydrozagadka and Skład Butelek.¹⁰² The 17th-century Church of Our Lady of Loretto keeps the oldest Gothic sculpture in Warsaw, a Virgin Mary.¹⁰³

A note on the Neon Museum: the tourist office's older Praga route still places it in the factory buildings of Mińska Street, but it has moved, and its current museum page puts it at the Palace of Culture and Science.^104,88 If you want a free walking tour of Warsaw's Praga, the free tour organizers named by the tourist office run themed walks; check their schedules.¹⁰⁵ As for safety, Praga needs the same care as any big city: GOV.UK advises against walking isolated streets alone at night.⁹⁰