plac Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego

This guide to plac Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego in Warsaw starts with German army engineers laying explosives under the Baroque Saxon Palace in December nineteen forty-four on Hitler's order, and the one stretch of colonnade the demolition crew stopped short of destroying. From there it follows the square through a string of renamings as Poland changed hands, from a Prussian king's parade ground to a Nazi occupier's plaza to a communist Victory Square. It also lingers on a summer day in nineteen seventy-nine, when half a million people gathered on this same ground to hear a Polish pope speak.