Sightseeing | Powiśle Walking Tour
Powiśle: Warsaw’s Riverside Hot Spot A former ticket office turned iconic bar - Warszawa Powiśle!. | Photo: Emilia Niedzwiedzka, unsplash
It might seem like quite a stretch to refer to any part of Warsaw as a hot spot, but the city’s riverside Powiśle district has been blipping on the radar for quite some time, however, in more recent years it’s gone through quite a rapid transformation which hasn’t gone unnoticed by eager travel writers searching for the next best urban gem! The Powiśle of today is a far cry from what it once was - a fairly mundane area nestled between the Royal Route and the Vistula River, full of apartment blocks, factories/warehouses and workshops (often dilapidated), avoided by locals as there was simply nothing interesting to see or do here that warranted rolling down the hill to explore. Fast-forward to today and this is one of the most intriguing parts of Warsaw, containing some fantastic museums, the modernised riverside boulevards, a revamped power station (we’ll get to that later), photo-friendly uni gardens, an iconic train station bar (what?) unique shops, and of course, a gastro and social scene hotbed! It’s time for an explanation for this mish-mash through a brief history lesson (don’t yawn, it’s worth it!). Warsaw University got the ball rolling by relocating its library to its current location on ul. Dobra 56/66 in 1999 and subsequently adding the now popular 42
gardens (including rooftop garden with viewing platform) in 2002. The intelligentsia had officially moved in. But Powiśle was still seen as an area of little interest, the most interesting point being the left-bank riverside boulevards, which were merely cracked concrete slabs covered in weeds, the remnants of a pre-war effort to build a promenade, and subsequently became a favourite haunt of local drunks. Oh, dear. But once city centre rents began sky rocketing, the vanquished found their new home here. Local artists, small cafe and restaurant owners, shop owners, even activists, looking for a near-thecentre area to relocate saw the potential in the leafy riverside district. And so things plodded along for a while, the blips on the radar getting louder with some outstanding gastro venues and nightlife spots popping up; one of the most iconic bars in Warsaw opened here in 2009, the former ticket office of the still functioning train station Warszawa Powiśle - the distinctive modernist shape and its more than Spartan approach to drink/food struck a chord with locals and its popularity continues to this day. And then exciting new plans to build the Copernicus Science Center were announced, resulting in an official
