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Overview
Warsaw's Art Nouveau architecture is one of the city's best-kept secrets. When the Old Town was rebuilt after the war, Warsaw chose to reconstruct its late 19th-century buildings in the city centre rather than in the historic quarter, and the results are extraordinary: a streetscape of ornamental facades, sculpted griffins, floral motifs, and ceramic tilework that most tourists walk past without noticing. This walk follows Nowy Świat and the surrounding streets — from the university district to the former ghetto boundary — to find the buildings that tell Warsaw's story in stone and plaster.
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20 pinned placesFeatured Places
Discover the best spots in this carefully curated guide. Each location has been personally visited and vetted to ensure an authentic and memorable experience.
Palac Kultury i Nauki
The Palace of Culture and Science — Warsaw's most famous building — is a Stalinist skyscraper that dominates the city skyline with its 237-metre Art Deco tower. Built in 1955 as a gift from the Soviet Union, the palace is Poland's tallest building and a remarkable example of Soviet neoclassicism scaled to urban monumentality. The observation floor on the 30th level offers one of the best views in Warsaw, and the building's interior — with its marble staircases and ornate public spaces — rewards exploration.
Nowy Świat 39
The building at Nowy Świat 39 is a perfect example of the Polish Secession style that dominated Warsaw's late 19th-century architecture. The facade is decorated with sculpted allegorical figures — representing the four seasons and the elements — in a style that blends Art Nouveau curves with traditional Polish folk motifs. The building's ceramic tile entrance hall is one of the best-preserved in Warsaw, the tiles still in their original vivid colours after a hundred years.
Muzeum Narodowe Extensión
The extension wing of the National Museum, completed in recent years by Polish architect Wojciech Tumasz, is one of Warsaw's most interesting contemporary buildings — a glass and steel structure that deliberately references the Art Nouveau style of the main building while clearly belonging to its own era. The extension's rooftop terrace has views over the city that are little known. The museum's collection includes one of Europe's most significant holdings of European old master paintings.
Kamienica Floriana
Kamienica Floriana on the Plac Zbawiciela is a residential building whose facade is one of the most-photographed Art Nouveau exteriors in Warsaw. The building was designed in 1903 by Franciszek Mączyński, one of the leading architects of the Polish Secession, and the facade features a remarkable ceramic relief depicting the four elements, rendered in vivid colours against the building's pale render. The ground floor is now a café with original interior details intact.
Ulica Smolna 10
The building at Ulica Smolna 10 is notable for its extraordinary ornamental balcony — a cast-iron balcony of unprecedented elaboration, decorated with organic motifs that seem to grow from the building's facade. The balcony was designed by the architect Stanislaw Czajkowski in 1906 and is considered one of the finest examples of Art Nouveau ironwork in Central Europe. The building itself is residential and not open to the public, but the balcony is visible from the street.
Biblioteka Uniwersytecka
The University Library on Dobra Street has one of the most remarkable library gardens in Europe — a roof garden on the 11th floor that is planted with species native to the Mazovian region, covering an area of over a hectare. The garden is open to the public and offers views across the Vistula to the Praga district. The library building itself is an example of interwar modernism, built in the 1930s when Warsaw was one of Europe's most architecturally ambitious cities.
Kamienica Pod Gwiazdą
Kamienica Pod Gwiazdą — The House Under the Star — on Ulica Chmielna takes its name from the gilded star that crowns its facade. The building was designed in 1902 by Konstanty Jakimowicz, a leading figure of the Polish Secession movement, and the facade is covered in ceramic tiles depicting the signs of the zodiac. The entrance hall has original mosaic floors and painted ceilings, remarkably preserved. The building is currently a boutique hotel, and the public café in the ground floor allows interior access.
Muzeum Warszawy
The Museum of Warsaw, recently renovated, occupies a series of tenement houses on the Old Town Rynek that have been interconnected internally and presented as a single institution. The renovation exposed the original architectural layers of each building — medieval cellars, Renaissance facades, baroque alterations, and 19th-century Art Nouveau additions — and presents them as a continuous architectural palimpsest. The museum's view from its top floor over the Old Town is one of the best in Warsaw.
Pałac Zamoyskich
The Pałac Zamoyskich on the ulica Senatorska is one of Warsaw's most important neoclassical palaces, built in the late 17th century and later remodeled. But the building that surrounds the palace's internal courtyard is a remarkable example of 19th-century commercial architecture: the arcade of shops that was built into the courtyard in the 1800s features ornate ironwork and painted ceilings that make the courtyard one of the most beautiful interior spaces in Warsaw. The courtyard is open during gallery hours.
Ulica Mokotowska 8
The tenement house at Ulica Mokotowska 8 is notable for its painted facade — a continuous decorative program that covers the building's entire exterior with scenes from Polish history and folklore. The paintings were executed in 1905 by the Polish painter Jan Guil and have been recently restored to remarkable vividness. The building stands on a corner of the fashionable Mokotów district, and the painted facade makes it one of the most photographed buildings in Warsaw.
Muzeum Niepodległości
The Museum of Independence occupies the former Miedzeszyn train station building, one of the few 19th-century railway structures in Warsaw to have survived the war. The building itself is an example of Polish railway architecture of the period, with decorative brickwork and cast-iron details that are characteristic of the style. The museum's collection covers Polish independence movements from the partitions to the present day.
Kamienica przy Placu Zbawiciela 6
The building at Plac Zbawiciela 6 is one of the most controversial Art Nouveau buildings in Warsaw: its original 1900 facade was replaced in the 1950s with a simplified socialist realist version that is now considered a historically significant example of postwar architectural taste. The resulting building is an accidental collision of two architectural eras — the original plan and the simplified reconstruction — and is more interesting for the conflict than either version would have been alone.
Pałac Blarona
The Pałac Blarona on the Ulica Langiewicza is a small neoclassical palace that now houses the Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Hall. The palace's interior has been restored to its 19th-century appearance and the concert hall is renowned for its acoustics. The building's garden — a small enclosed park that is open to the public during summer months — contains a remarkable collection of heritage apple varieties from the Mazovian region.
Instytut im. Stefanii
The Stefanii Institute on the Ulica Szpitalna is one of Warsaw's most important Art Nouveau buildings, designed in 1901 by Józef W. The building's facade is covered in ceramic tiles depicting medical and scientific symbols, a remarkable program of decorative tilework that is unique in Warsaw. The building's interior retains its original entrance hall with painted ceilings and mosaic floors. The institute is still active as a cultural centre and opens its doors during Warsaw Gallery Weekend.
Ulica Senatorska Facades
Ulica Senatorska is one of Warsaw's grandest streets — the route of the royal coronation processions — and its 19th-century facades represent the finest collection of Secession architecture on any single street in Warsaw. The buildings range from 1895 to 1910 and include remarkable examples by the leading Polish Secession architects: Józef P. S., Franciszek Mączyński, and Władysław S. The street is best walked from north to south in the late afternoon, when the low sun lights the ornamental facades from the west.
Królikarz Café
Królikarz — The Rabbit Keeper — is a café on the Ulicawersal that takes its name from the carved stone rabbit that decorates the building's corner. The café occupies the ground floor of a 1904 tenement house whose Art Nouveau facade includes ceramic panels depicting rabbits in a forest setting — a whimsical decorative program that has made the building a local landmark. The café interior retains the original wooden bar and tile floors from the building's period.
Ulica Widok 8
The building at Ulica Widok 8 is a 1902 tenement house whose decorative program is devoted entirely to the theme of Warsaw's history. The facade features a sequence of ceramic relief panels depicting scenes from the city's founding myth, its medieval period, and its Renaissance golden age, rendered in the Art Nouveau style. The building's entrance hall has original painted ceilings depicting Warsaw's guilds, and the staircase windows contain original leaded glass.
Łazienki Królewskie Park
Łazienki Park — the Royal Baths Park — is Warsaw's largest and most beautiful park, covering 76 hectares of formal gardens, lakes, and woodland. The park's many buildings include the Palace on the Isle, a neoclassical masterpiece by Matejko, and the remarkable Myśliwski Castle, a hunting lodge whose interior is painted with elaborate frescoes. The park is at its finest in autumn when the trees turn and the summer concert series brings Chopin performances to the Chopin Statue.
Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej
The Museum of Modern Art on the UlicaPAavi is housed in one of Warsaw's most architecturally interesting buildings: a 1960s modernist structure that was controversially not rebuilt after the war, preserved in its postwar ruin state, and then finally completed in a reconstruction that deliberately shows its own construction history. The building is as interesting as its collection, and the museum's view from its top floor over Warsaw's reconstructed Old Town is extraordinary.
Ulica Chmielna 19
Ulica Chmielna 19 is a tenement house from 1906 whose extraordinary interior — accessible through the ground-floor café — includes a painted dining room with a complete decorative program of Secession murals. The murals, by an unknown artist working in the Polish Folk Art tradition, cover all four walls and the ceiling of the room and depict a pastoral scene of remarkable colour and detail. The room has been preserved exactly as it was found in the 1920s.
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