Warsaw City Tour

Warsaw. Lazienki Park.

The park's name is derived from the Baroque bathing pavilion called the Lazienki, which was built in the seventeenth century on the model of ancient baths, and in the eighteenth century it was rebuilt by the Polish king at his summer residence.

Today the Park in Lazienki is a complex of palaces and gardens with an area of over 75 hectares in the center of city.

Take place here both the famous Sunday concerts of Chopin's music (in the summer) as well as evening theater spectacles in the Theatre on the Island and in the Old Orangery.

In the garden we will meet the menagerie of free-living animals.

From swans and ducks, through flock of squirrels and peacocks.

They all beg for feeding and all are systematically fattened by walking people.

If you are lucky you can find a peacock feather that, according to beliefs of the ancient Britain, assured immortality, in the Middle Ages was awarded to troubadours from the hands of glorified ladies.

And if you had three feathers, you could decorate them knightly helmets as a sign of having three Christian virtues: faith, hope and love.

Warsaw peacocks - and their cousins in India and Sri Lanka, live more than 20 years.

On the night they wandering on the trees where they are safe, and they spend the day walking along the paths and occasionally they visit them harem (to 7 females).

From time to time - because peacock after all can also be sick of a bird clamor.

Warsaw. Old Town Marketplace.

Mermaid Statue. According to the legend, she is one of two mermaid sisters who swam from the Atlantic Ocean to the Baltic Sea (the second mermaid statue is in Copenhagen).

The first coat of arms of Warsaw with Mermaid from the fourteenth century represents a monster with bird's feet, lion's tail and hooves of an ox.

It was not until the fifteenth century when on the image are emerging woman's breasts which in the sixteenth century fully matured and filled the existing flat chest.

The slow evolution of the Mermaid in the seventeenth century involved removal of helmet, and addition of hair and fish tail.

Finally, in the eighteenth century appears current mermaid figure.

Undoubtedly 300 years of maturation and make-up allows with greater degree of understanding look at contemporary preparing of women to leave the house.

On the end, is worth to add that due to the safety of the monument - the original was placed in a nearby museum.

So anyway, the preparation came to nothing...

Warsaw. Wilanow.

Mausoleum of Potocki family.

Built in the nineteenth century, a symbolic tomb of successive owners of the Palace in Wilanow. Designed in the likeness of the king tombs from Wawel Cathedral in Kraków.

Lying on the sarcophagus forms are mapped according to canons attributed to the form of the royal representation. Around the bed are presented in the form of relief interest and numerous virtues of spouses and kept by lions - shields with coats of arms of the family.

Founder of the tomb has announced a tender-auction among of Warsaw artists, for the design and construction - and among the received 3 offers, he chose the cheapest - for 34,000 złoty or equal to 5 medium-sized farms.

Despite build of the impressive monument, the ashes of the dead finally placed in the nearby parish church.

Warsaw. Monument to Soviet young man with a book and a pneumatic hammer.

Since 1934 the only acceptable form of art in Soviet Russia, and from 50's in other countries in the socialist bloc - was soc-realism.

The main theme for this trend was the work of the workers, allegories of victory of communism in the world, and portraits of leaders.

As wrote the outstanding Russian composer Shostakovich:

"The artist who painted the portrait which did not look like the commander, disappeared forever. The same met a writer who used the wrong words. Nobody kept any discussion of aesthetic or ask for clarification. Someone just knocking on the door at night. That's all. "

Around the Palace of Culture and Science are placed over 30 social realist sculptures. From Soviet impersonation of cultural disciplines, through ideas of representatives of various continents, to images of athletes and workers.

Extremely interesting is the figure of a youth with a book inscribed with the names on the cover of the three classics of communism: Marx, Engels and Lenin.

Underneath was another classic name - Stalin, but after a thaw in 1956 was removed both from the carved book and from name of the whole complex of the palace, which originally had proud name of Joseph Stalin.