Warsaw Citadel

This guide to the Warsaw Citadel begins before dawn on August 5, 1864, as five men are marched through a fortress gate on the slope where you're standing, ropes already prepared. Their leader, Romuald Traugutt, was the secret dictator of Poland's underground government during the January Uprising, betrayed weeks earlier and dragged in chains to a fortress Tsar Nicholas I built specifically to break men like him. The guide traces the Citadel's founding after the 1830 revolt and the tens of thousands held in its Pavilion Ten interrogation cells, including what Traugutt refused to give up under questioning. Listen for the fortress gate itself as you walk through it.