Ząbkowska

This guide to Zabkowska in Warsaw's Praga district opens at Rozycki Bazaar, a marketplace that opened in 1882 and quietly became one of the city's most reliable black markets, officially selling vegetables while unofficially trading whatever the communist state pretended did not exist. It follows the tenements that Jewish merchants and the rising middle class built here around 1900, and how this side of the river escaped the leveling that flattened the rest of Warsaw after the 1944 Uprising. You'll also hear about the small shrines tucked into courtyards behind these facades, built by residents during the German occupation.