Nowy ¦wiat is the most popular street in Warsaw, a must-see for every tourist and popular with both foreigners and Varsovians. On Nowy ¦wiat, you can sit in a café summer garden, have a good meal and go shopping. You can take a walk surrounded by the atmosphere of a big city and see its old buildings and pockets of the past.

Nowy ¦wiat evolved from a former road leading from Old Warsaw to the nearby town of Jazdów. The first settlements along the route date back to around 1640, when the street was given its present name of Nowy ¦wiat, meaning New World. The street was home to small wooden farmers' houses. By the second half of the 18th century, more affluent buildings had appeared, including seven palaces, a dozen townhouses, a market, along with the Vauxhall (Foksal in Polish) public park, modeled after the park of that name in London.

The location was the venue of various public events and shows, including the first balloon flights in Warsaw. Nobility and burghers made up the majority of the residents of the street. From those days, only house No. 1 has survived in an unchanged form.

In 1815-1830, during the period of the Constitutional Kingdom of Poland-a quasi-state formed under the final act of the Congress of Vienna and provided with its own constitution-Nowy ¦wiat had a harmonious, compact development with dozens of one- and two-story late-classicist buildings. St. Alexander's Church was built in the years 1818-1825 on the site of the former Z³otych Krzy¿y crossroads, now known as Trzech Krzy¿y Square. Nowa Droga Jerozolimska, today Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerozolimskie Avenue), was built to intersect Nowy ¦wiat. The street gradually grew into a shopping artery with many stores, perfume and wine producers, a pharmacy, the Aspazja café and many arts and crafts shops. Nowy ¦wiat was provided with gas lighting in 1856 as one of the first streets in the city.

The street continued to develop. Elegant metropolitan buildings started to appear, lined with large shop windows. At the end of the 19th century, the street had hundreds of stores, the first fashion houses, numerous restaurants and milk bars, very popular at that time. A small pastry store, A. Blikle, opened at No. 33 in 1869. It soon expanded and established headquarters at No. 35. The two addresses today have the most famous and oldest Warsaw pastry store and café combined with a luxury delicatessen store.

The street's first modern hotel, the Savoy, dates back to 1905. The five-story building stood out for its dimensions as well as pure Art Nouveau facade and interior.

During the interwar period, Nowy ¦wiat was considered to be the most elegant street in Warsaw. The street's spacious courtyards had many cinemas, of which the largest, the Colosseum, could accommodate an audience of several thousand, as well as revue theaters and operettas. Here you could buy luxury clothes and accessories, see fashion shows, and at night visit one of the area's many cafes and restaurants, where you could always meet popular Polish writers, artists and politicians.

World War II brutally severed the street's development. The Warsaw Uprising in 1944 left Nowy ¦wiat nearly completely ruined.

The reconstruction work from 1946-1950 restored to the buildings their classicist facades of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As the Polish economy was nationalized after WWII, the rebuilt street's business and social life declined for decades. Here and there small privately-owned shoemaker's, tailor's and watchmaker's establishments operated.

Blikle's cafe was the only survivor, serving donuts as delicious as ever. Private stores and services concentrated instead on a side street called Chmielna.

In the wake of the political and economic changes after 1989, Nowy ¦wiat slowly started to regain its prominence. The early 1990s saw attempts to revamp Nowy ¦wiat as the city's main shopping street, but after a time elegant boutiques started to move out of the central district to newly built shopping centers. Restaurants and cafes promptly moved in and have in recent years turned the street into a gastronomic quarter of the city.

In the summer season from May to October, Nowy ¦wiat is closed to traffic on weekends, becoming a promenade full of cafe street gardens. In winter, the street is impressively illuminated. Foksal Street, the extension of Chmielna Street across Nowy ¦wiat, also has many restaurants. Chmielna Street continues to concentrate trade and services. Off the main tourist route, at the corner of Smolna Street, there is a "colony" of small cafés and oriental bars, a meeting place of crowds of young people in the evening.

Walking along Nowy ¦wiat, here and there you can spot remnants of the street's former splendor. The building at the corner of Smolna Street houses a pharmacy with fully preserved neo-Gothic interior furnishing dating back to 1851. The hall of the building at No. 58A still holds the original Art Nouveau staircase of the former Savoy hotel. There is the prewar Blikle, offering traditional Polish delicacies made according to century-old methods. The Grycan firm's ice cream also boasts a long tradition and is made according to family recipes of 60 years ago.

Relics of the communist era include four cafés with an old-fashioned ambiance of their own. The Nowy ¦wiat café at No. 63 used to be one of the most elegant establishments in the 1950s. At the Amatorska, Piotru¶ and Bajka cafés, time stopped around the year 1970. Their patrons include pensioners and students. They come here out of sentiment or because they consider it trendy, but both groups are attracted by the relatively low prices. In these places, you can catch a glimpse of the old days. You can drop in for a cup of delicious coffee and Warsaw's original bajaderka and wuzetka cakes. You can also sample the simple yet tasty dishes they serve.
Katarzyna Majcherczyk