University of Warsaw Gate
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of the tall iron gate crowned with an eagle, and watch the students drifting in and out between lectures. Then turn around, because the view behind you matters just as much. The university was founded in 1816, when Chopin was six, and it grew up literally around his family.
Key Facts
| Place | University of Warsaw Gate |
|---|---|
| Address | Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.24010, 21.01720 |
| Part of Walk | Chopin's Warsaw: A Walk Through the Composer's Home Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of the tall iron gate crowned with an eagle, and watch the students drifting in and out between lectures. Then turn around, because the view behind you matters just as much.
The university was founded in 1816, when Chopin was six, and it grew up literally around his family. In 1826, after finishing secondary school, he enrolled in the Main School of Music, which belonged to the university, and studied composition with Józef Elsner. Elsner was a wise teacher. He saw that this pupil broke the rules of harmony, and, by all accounts, he let him, believing a genius should find his own way.
When Chopin graduated in 1829, Elsner wrote a short verdict in his final report that every Polish music student can quote: Chopin Fryderyk, exceptional ability, musical genius. Three words of praise, and they turned out to be an understatement.
Now look across the street at the church of the Holy Cross. Chopin died in Paris in October 1849, at thirty-nine, and asked that his heart be taken home. His sister Ludwika carried it across Europe in a jar of spirit, the story goes hidden beneath her skirts to pass the Russian border guards. It was sealed into a pillar of the church, under a line from the Gospel of Matthew: where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 the heart was taken out of the battered church, and it was returned to its pillar on the seventeenth of October 1945, the anniversary of his death.
So the young composer was trained on this side of the street, and the man came back to rest, in a sense, on the other. Between them runs a single pavement. Now walk through the gate and follow the main avenue across the campus to the low white palace at the end of it, the university's oldest building.