Mariensztat — the Warsaw quarter where postwar rebuilding started

Maria's town

The name is German and entirely literal. In 1762 Eustachy Potocki received this land as part of his wife's dowry and founded a jurydyka here — a private township outside the jurisdiction of Warsaw's magistrate. He named it after his wife, Maria: Marienstadt, hence the Polish Mariensztat. Independence was short-lived, and in 1784 the place was absorbed into the city.

The quarter sits low, at the foot of the escarpment on what used to be Vistula floodplain. Developing it in the later 18th century pushed the river channel roughly 150 metres east, which says something about how freely the Vistula once moved here.

Through the 19th century this was a working quarter of trade and small industry. Samuel Orgelbrand, publisher of the great Polish universal encyclopaedia, set up a printing works on Bednarska street in 1861–1863. By 1865 the square had become the main marketplace of the riverside district, and in 1913 traders moved in from the Old Town market square after it was closed.

Tall tenements, then nothing

In 1910–1911 Matias Taubenhaus put up a nine-storey tenement here, at the time the tallest residential building in Warsaw. Land was cheap because the ground was low and damp, so builders went up instead of out. Earlier, the construction of Pancer's viaduct in 1844–1846, carrying traffic from the Royal Castle towards the new Kierbedź bridge, had already cost the quarter part of its houses.

Prewar Mariensztat had a poor reputation — crowded, shabby, closer in character to the river wharves than to Krakowskie Przedmieście a few metres above it. German troops destroyed the buildings in 1944 after the Warsaw Uprising, and the viaduct was blown up that October.

Built in two years

Rebuilding started here before anywhere else in the city, for a practical reason: the East-West Route was being driven through the escarpment with a tunnel under the Old Town axis and a new bridge over the Vistula, and Mariensztat lay directly on its line. The estate went up in 1948–1949 to a design by Zygmunt Stępiński, with Józef Sigalin coordinating the wider scheme, and the first tenants were the workers building the road.

Fifty-three small houses were built, nearly thirty of them along Bednarska. The old street grid was abandoned and the surviving tall tenements near the viaduct taken down. The new Mariensztat was meant to read as a small town rather than a city block: two upper floors, tiled roofs, plain arcades, warm render, and proportions borrowed from modest 17th and 18th-century houses. It is socialist realism, but its gentle, almost storybook variety.

The estate opened together with the East-West Route in July 1949 and was immediately used as a showcase for the rebuilding of Warsaw. In 2009 its street layout was entered in the heritage register.

The market square

The centre of the estate is a rectangular square, closed on three sides by three-storey houses with tiled roofs and open on the north towards the East-West Route. The missing fourth side is deliberate: the square looks out onto the traffic artery and the artery looks into the square, so the estate was never hidden behind it.

The fountain on the square, with its small figures of boys, is the work of the sculptor Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz. The square is older than the houses around it: a market was laid out here in 1843 and enlarged in 1853 by demolishing a few houses on Garbarska street, while its present shape and name date from 1949.

Getting there and what to combine it with

• On foot — the best approach is down from Castle Square past St Anne's church, or along Bednarska street from Krakowskie Przedmieście.
• By metro — Nowy Świat-Uniwersytet station on line M2 is a few minutes away.
• By tram or bus — services along the East-West Route stop on both sides of the estate.
• By car — narrow one-way streets inside a paid parking zone; it is easier to leave the car above the escarpment.
• Time needed — a quarter of an hour for the estate itself, which makes it a natural stop on a walk from the Old Town down to the river.
• On screen — An Adventure in Marienstadt (1953), the first Polish colour feature, is set here and records the rebuilding as it happened.

How to get there and practical info

Location

central Warsaw, Powiśle; below the escarpment between Castle Square, the East-West Route and Bednarska street

Founded

settlement founded 1762; present buildings 1948–1949, designed by Zygmunt Stępiński

Highlights

the rectangular market square with Jarnuszkiewicz's fountain, the estate architecture, Orgelbrand square

Protection

street layout entered in the heritage register in 2009

Time needed

fifteen to thirty minutes

Nearby

the Old Town, the Royal Castle, St Anne's church, the Vistula boulevards

Current hours and tickets

the estate is made up of ordinary public streets, open and free; guided walks and events are listed by the official Warsaw tourism service

When to go