Aleje Ujazdowskie: the Avenue of Lime Trees
Why is it significant?
Walk for a moment under the lime trees and notice the strange double life of this street: four lanes of traffic on one side, and on the other a pavement that still feels like a promenade, with wrought-iron railings, gardens and the flags of embassies.
Key Facts
| Place | Aleje Ujazdowskie: the Avenue of Lime Trees |
|---|---|
| Address | Aleje Ujazdowskie 13, 00-567 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.22480, 21.02380 |
| Part of Walk | Warsaw's Green Royal Route: Aleje Ujazdowskie to Łazienki Park, Chopin and the Palace on the Isle |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk for a moment under the lime trees and notice the strange double life of this street: four lanes of traffic on one side, and on the other a pavement that still feels like a promenade, with wrought-iron railings, gardens and the flags of embassies. This is Aleje Ujazdowskie, the most dignified address in Warsaw.
It began as a pilgrimage. In the 1720s King Augustus the Strong laid out a Way of the Cross from the Square of Three Crosses down to Ujazdów, with stations along the road. Later in the century King Stanisław August Poniatowski folded it into his grand scheme of avenues and gardens, and in the nineteenth century bankers, industrialists and aristocrats raced each other to build villas and small palaces along it. On Sunday afternoons the whole of fashionable Warsaw rode out here in carriages, to see and to be seen.
The war gave the avenue a darker chapter. During the German occupation this was part of a closed district reserved for Germans, Polish families were thrown out of their flats, and the street was given a German name. And right here, near the corner of Piękna street, on the morning of 1 February 1944, a Home Army unit ambushed the car of Franz Kutschera, the SS and police commander responsible for mass street executions. He was killed within a couple of minutes. Several of the young fighters died of their wounds in the days that followed.
Look for the small plaque that remembers that morning... and then notice how ordinary the corner looks today. A few steps away, behind its fence, stands the embassy of the United States, and diplomats' cars glide past the place where that car stopped.
But the real heroes of this avenue are the trees. The lines of lime and chestnut make a green tunnel in summer, and in June the scent of lime blossom hangs over the traffic. Keep walking south along this side, and in a few minutes the railings on your right will open onto a nineteenth-century city park.