Targowa Street & Wileński Station
Why is it significant?
You are standing at the top of Targowa, Praga's main street, with the old Wileński railway station on the corner and a wide, busy road running south past tram tracks and grand old tenements.
Key Facts
| Place | Targowa Street & Wileński Station |
|---|---|
| Address | ul. Targowa 72, 03-734 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.25380, 21.03580 |
| Part of Walk | Warsaw's Right Bank: Praga's Bears, Bazaars, Vodka and Backyard Shrines |
| Generated | Generated |
You are standing at the top of Targowa, Praga's main street, with the old Wileński railway station on the corner and a wide, busy road running south past tram tracks and grand old tenements. Targ means market in Polish, and that is what this street has always been about: buying, selling and bargaining.
For most of its history Praga was not Warsaw at all. It was a separate little town across the river, joined to the city only in 1791. Merchants coming from the east, with cattle, grain and goods, stopped on this side before crossing, and markets grew along this road. In the 1860s the railway to St Petersburg arrived here, later known as the Vilnius line, which is why the station is still called Wileński.
Praga has seen terrible days. On the fourth of November 1794, during the Kościuszko Uprising, Russian troops under General Suvorov stormed Praga's defences and then massacred thousands of its inhabitants, soldiers and civilians alike. And in 1944 Praga lived through another tragedy from a different angle. The Red Army took this bank in mid-September 1944, while the Warsaw Uprising was still being fought on the other side of the Vistula, and halted here until January 1945.
Because Praga was not systematically destroyed after the Uprising, as the left bank was, its nineteenth-century tenements are still standing, with their courtyards, balconies and peeling plaster. That is why film crews come here to recreate pre-war Warsaw. Roman Polański shot scenes of The Pianist in Praga's streets, because the real ones across the river no longer existed.
Under your feet runs metro line 2, which reached Praga in 2015 and brought a wave of new cafés and new residents. Old Praga watches them with a raised eyebrow. Now walk south down Targowa, past the market hall entrances, to the restored tenement with the museum sign at number 50.