St. Alexander's Church

This guide to St. Alexander's Church in Warsaw starts with an 1815 plan for a triumphal arch honoring Tsar Alexander the First, a plan the Tsar himself vetoed in favor of a church, and follows architect Piotr Aigner's Pantheon-inspired design through a later Victorian-era makeover that added towers and a bigger dome. It reaches the September 1944 bombing during the Warsaw Uprising, when the enlarged church came down piece by piece, and the postwar argument over what to rebuild. Notice which version of the church is actually standing before you now.