Warsaw in a day: Old Town and the Vistula

The Royal Castle, on its eponymous square, opens the route: destroyed during the Nazi occupation and rebuilt only in the 1970s thanks to popular donations, it conserves baroque rooms and a painting collection that includes works by Rembrandt.

The Rynek Starego Miasta, the old town's main square, is surrounded by colorful houses rebuilt according to the drawings and paintings of eighteenth-century Bernard Bellotto, which served as models for postwar architects.

The Palace of Culture and Science, the Stalinist skyscraper donated by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, still dominates the skyline: its thirtieth-floor observation deck remains the highest point from which to view the city.

At the Łazienki Gardens, the great royal park to the south of the center, the Water Palace literally floats on an artificial lake, while a Chopin monument hosts free concerts in summer weekends.

Walking between the rebuilt Rynek and the Palace of Culture means crossing two almost opposite ideas of Warsaw, separated by only two kilometers and a century of history.

The Vistula riverbank, with its improvised urban beaches, is probably the best place to let the two images recompose into a single city, watching the water instead of the buildings.