Warsaw Uprising Monument

This guide to the Warsaw Uprising Monument on Krasiński Square centers on the first of September 1944, when thousands of fighters and civilians fled the collapsing Old Town through a manhole here and into the sewers below, while soldiers dropped grenades and gas from above. It follows the decades communist Poland refused a monument to that escape, and the contested 1984 design competition, won by student Piotr Rzeczkowski, that eventually led to the bronze standing here. Look down at the manhole worked into the sculpture at your feet.