Presidential Palace, Warsaw

Stand on the wide pavement of Krakowskie Przedmieście and listen for a moment. Footsteps on stone. A tram bell somewhere behind you. The low murmur of tourists walking toward the Old Town. In front of you, behind iron railings and a pair of stone lions, a long pale facade stretches back from the street. Its columns are calm and even. Its windows are tall. This is the Presidential Palace, the official seat of the President of Poland. It is the largest palace on this street.

This street is part of what Warsaw calls the Royal Route. It is a chain of avenues that once linked the Royal Castle in the north with the royal residences to the south. For centuries, the richest families in the country built their town houses along it. They wanted to be close to the king and close to each other. So the palace in front of you is not a lonely monument. It is one link in a long line of aristocratic homes, churches and university buildings.

The story begins in the seventeenth century. A powerful military commander, Stanisław Koniecpolski, began a grand residence on this spot in the 1640s. He held the title of Grand Crown Hetman, which means he commanded the armies of the Polish kingdom. Over the following generations, the house passed between several great noble families. The Lubomirskis owned it for a time. Later it belonged to the Radziwiłł family, and for many years Varsovians simply called it the Radziwiłł Palace.

In those years the palace was a place of theatre, music and long evenings. Here is a detail many visitors miss. Frédéric Chopin gave one of his earliest public performances in this building, as a small boy of about eight. He played at a charity concert, years before Paris and before his name was known across Europe. So the first applause of Poland's best-loved composer may have filled rooms just behind that facade.

What you see today mostly comes from the early nineteenth century. At that time Poland was not an independent state. Much of the country had become the Kingdom of Poland, under the Russian tsar. The palace was rebuilt as the residence of the tsar's viceroy, the official who ruled in his name. The architect Chrystian Piotr Aigner gave it the clean neoclassical lines you see now. Neoclassical means a style that copies the order and symmetry of ancient Greek and Roman buildings.

Look at the shape of the whole site. The main block sits back from the street. Two long wings reach forward on each side and frame a deep courtyard. This layout is called a cour d'honneur, a court of honour. It was designed so that guests arriving by carriage would feel the full scale of the house before they reached the door. Even today, the empty space of the courtyard does the same work for you.

In the middle of that courtyard rises a bronze horseman. This is Prince Józef Poniatowski, a Polish commander of the Napoleonic wars and a national hero. The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen designed the statue in a classical spirit, so the prince wears Roman-style dress instead of a uniform. The figure that stands here now is a recast copy. The original was destroyed by German forces during the Second World War, and Denmark later helped to bring the prince back to Warsaw.

That war destroyed most of Warsaw. After the uprising of 1944, German troops burned and blew up large parts of the city, street by street. This palace was damaged, but it came through with much of its structure standing. Many of the buildings around you were rebuilt from ruins after the war. So as you walk along this street, remember that some facades are survivors, and others are careful reconstructions of what was lost.

Now comes a twist that surprises many visitors. In the communist period, the palace housed the Council of Ministers, the government of the People's Republic. In 1955, leaders from the Soviet Union and its allies signed a military treaty in this building. The world came to know it as the Warsaw Pact. For more than three decades, the name of this city was attached to the Eastern Bloc's alliance against the West.

Then history turned again, in the same rooms. In 1989, the communist government sat down with the opposition movement Solidarity for the Round Table talks. They met at a large round table so that no side sat at the head. The talks opened the way to partly free elections later that year. So this one building saw the signing of the Warsaw Pact and also the first steps toward its end. Few places in Europe hold both chapters.

In 1994 the palace became the official seat of the President of the Republic of Poland. Lech Wałęsa, the former Solidarity leader, was the first president to move his office here. Today the building is used for state ceremonies, official visits and the swearing-in of ministers. A guard of honour stands at the gate. The interior is generally not open to casual visitors, though special open days are sometimes held.

The pavement in front of the gates is also a place where the nation gathers. In April 2010, a plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński and many senior officials crashed near Smolensk in Russia. In the days that followed, people filled this street with candles, flowers and flags. The sea of small flames stretched far along the railings. Locals still remember the silence of those nights. On national holidays, you may still see candles and wreaths left here.

Before you move on, look around you. To one side, the Hotel Bristol shows a very different taste, with its richer late nineteenth century decoration. Across the street and a short walk north, church towers rise above the roofs. The stone lions at the gate sit calmly, as they have through tsars, wars and new republics. Take a slow look at the courtyard, the bronze horseman and the pale columns. Then walk on along the Royal Route, and notice how many layers of the city you can read on a single street.