Constitution Square

Plac Konstytucji is the central square of the Marszalkowska Dzielnica Mieszkaniowa, the vast residential district that Polish architects Stanislaw Jankowski, Jan Knothe, Jozef Sigalin and Zygmunt Stepinski laid out in central Warsaw from 1950 in the Socialist Realist style. Its inauguration on 22 July 1952, then the Polish national holiday, marked a high point of Stalinist urban design. The monumental apartment blocks, with classicising hints, feature arcades, reliefs of workers, peasants and soldiers, and the oversized lamp candelabras that have become an icon of Warsaw. Today trams cross the square, the arcades host bars and cafes, and plans are debated to replace the traffic with a green park. A telling place to sense the atmosphere of the Soc-Real era.