Kamienne Schodki: A Rebuilt Old Town, Looking Across the River

Why is it significant?

Stand at the top of Kamienne Schodki, the Stone Steps, and let your eyes follow the narrow lane as it tumbles towards the Vistula between tall, thin houses in ochre, rust and cream. It is the only street of the Old Town made entirely of stairs.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand at the top of Kamienne Schodki, the Stone Steps, and let your eyes follow the narrow lane as it tumbles towards the Vistula between tall, thin houses in ochre, rust and cream. It is the only street of the Old Town made entirely of stairs. For centuries water carriers climbed it with buckets from the river, and the houses look as if they have watched them do it for four hundred years.

They have not. In August 1944 the Old Town was one of the strongholds of the Uprising, and the Germans attacked it with everything they had: dive bombers, heavy artillery, mortars, and remote-controlled demolition vehicles. By the time the defenders withdrew at the start of September, the district lay mostly in ruins. After the war, architects rebuilt it street by street, using pre-war measurements, photographs, and even the eighteenth-century views of Warsaw painted by Bernardo Bellotto, known here as Canaletto. In 1980 UNESCO put the Old Town on the World Heritage List, not as a survivor, but as an exceptional reconstruction.

Now look east, over the rooftops, to the far bank of the river. That is Praga. In mid-September 1944 the Red Army took Praga, and for the next four months the front line ran along the Vistula, a few hundred metres from the dying city. Soldiers of the Polish First Army, fighting alongside the Soviets, tried to cross and reach the insurgents in the second half of September, and suffered heavy losses. There was no major crossing. For weeks Stalin also refused to let Allied planes dropping supplies to the Uprising land on Soviet-held airfields.

The insurgents surrendered on 2 October. The Germans then expelled the remaining population and spent the following months destroying what was left of the city, systematically, district by district, with explosives and fire. When Soviet and Polish troops finally entered Warsaw in January 1945, they walked into a landscape of ruins.

So every stone under your feet here is a decision, made after 1945, to bring a city back rather than leave it as a memorial. Climb back up, cross the Market Square, and head out through the narrow streets to Podwale, the street that runs along the red brick city walls.