Talk:Warsaw

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[edit] Reconstruction

www.gowarsaw.eu provides you with quality information and photos on Warsaw.

Warsaw is a MOST impressive re-building. Is it true that the historic center was restored not only on the basis of photographs but also using 18th century city-scape paintings? I was told that in Warsaw by tour guides (who of course are not to be trusted - we're all much too glib) and by one art historian. --MichaelTinkler

All the above is true. The re-building might be impressive, though it sometimes gives me the impression that historic center is _fake_. -- WojPob

First, we should look at the reconstruction as a positive thing, a noble act against the backdrop of Nazi and Soviet savagery. Second, most historic buildings are remodeled, gutted and reconstructed so many times over the course of history, that they can all be deemed "fake". Also, Michael, about not trusting tour guides, Poles are probably less inclined (in a bad way) to "brag" about their stuff, so if a tour guide is saying something in a good light, then its probably true. I call it the Polish complex :). Also, I agree with your statement below completely. I believe that Warsaw should do all that is possible to work towards reconstructing the prewar city, use unused land (like that gigantic plot near Plac Zawiszy) for constructing a "skyscraper" center. -- Sven Stroms

hmm. you mean what we professionally call 'inauthentic', an extremely problematic situation. Art historians are famous for dismissing reconstruction, but for not being able to recognize it without technical experts. I met the man who runs the workshop that handles all the marble on the exterior of the Duomo (cathedral) in Florence, Italy. He says that he hasn't run across a piece of stone older than the 18th century. It's skin is not 15th century (oh, and I don't mean the 19th century facade that's opposite the baptistery, I mean the flanks and apse, which are supposed to be earlier). I wonder if most people would get that impression if they didn't know the story? --MichaelTinkler

My friend use to say, that the best thing in Warsaw is Intercity train to Krakow. Whenever i see "Warsaw" i feel that urge to talk about Palace of Culture (new uknown word was liked by Warsawians) and famous letter which argued that capital of Poland should be moved to Gdansk. szopen

I have been comparing what i recall from visits to Warsaw to the pics on this page. And even though there are some historical buildings, it is plain misleading to promote Warsaw as a 100% "old city" with 20 pics of "old" buildings, and none of some of the more grey communist style building. I believe that there should be a more balanced view on this, and not try to make the article into a tourist propaganda leaflet, with a classical estethical view. Any comments on this? -- Alex

I'd like to add something that I've learnt about Warsaw while studying architecture and more specifically 'Heritage Preservation'. Reconstructing Warsaw's Old Town has benefited the buildings sanitation. Moreover, Warsaw has one of the best sewage systems a city can have, in the world.

[edit] Wikipedians in/from Warsaw

I will be in Warsaw from 25th - 28th February if any Warsovian Wikipedians feel like meeting up (my email address is at sjc).

i guess not many Warsovians here. Sjc, came to Poznan. We have less traffic, less crime, and, what's most delighting, less varsovians. szopen

Maybe so, but I'll be working so I won't be able to get away to Poznan, alas. sjc

Too bad I didn't noticed this page before... I was born in Warsaw, live in Warsaw, love my city and I'm proud of it. No matter what guys from Galicia say, Warsaw is definitely a place to visit. Halibutt

Is it just my impression or is szopen putting way too much of his personal bias against Warsaw and its inhabitants into this discussion? I know Warsaw quite well and let me assure you that the city itself is worth a prolonged stay. Being the political, cultural and economic centre of Poland, Warsaw has incredibly much to offer. septemberunderground

-- I'm a 100% Warsawer, I was born here and here I've spent almost 100% of my life. Ish_warsaw

[edit] Other issues

The history of Warsaw began before 1861, no? john 08:26 24 May 2003 (UTC)


[edit] Work in progress

I'm working on a new version of this page here: User:Halibutt/Warsaw. I'd appreciate any help from you. Halibutt 01:20, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Population wrong

On the Warsaw's wikipedia page, population is given as 2,269,000. I don't know where this data is taken from as I can't find any source that would confirm it. Actually, all the sources I checked give a number closer to 1,700,000.

On the official website of Warsaw in Polish language you can find population data for every separate district: http://um.warszawa.pl/v_syrenka/liczby/02.htm Overall, according to the website, Warsaw has 1,707,400 inhabitants.

Information on the English version of the official website is slightly out-of-date though. It provides the following numbers: Inhabitants- 1,63 million Inhabitants with suburbs -2,5 million

Apparently the value of 2,269,000 is with some suburbs included. But it is important to understand that there exists no unambigous criteria for determining which towns that surround Warsaw should be included in the sum and which should not. It is just an approximate number and definitely it shouldn't be called "population of Warsaw" as it is now in wikipedia.

Moreover, it seems that in the Historical Population table the number from 1990 is given without the suburbs (1990: 1,611,800), whereas the number from 2003 is given with surburbs included (2003: 2,269,000). I wonder why no one noticed that within 13 years population magically grew by over 600,000 people even though within previous decades it was growing by approximately 100,000 every 10 years :)

I suggest that the person responsible for the website confirms the number in the Municipal Office. The telephone numbers and e-mail addresses are given here (in English): http://www.e-warsaw.pl/ratusz/adres.htm

Keep up the good work with wikipedia!

Bye AK

You're right, since 1990 the population of Warsaw grew significantly. It was possible mostly due to the fact that many of the suburbs were swallowed recently (Białołęka, Wawer, Rembertów) and the sleeping areas (Ursynów, Bemowo) grew significantly. Halibutt 07:12, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

In the population section: there was a sentence about the amount of vietnamese people living in Warsaw. I deleted it as it seems not to make any sense without more detailed figures of other ethnic minorities in Warsaw. Thereby no source was given. Mikkip (20th August 2007)

[edit] trolleybus

I've recently stumbled upon an account in which a soldier of the 1939 Defence War describes that the barricade he fough on was made of a broken trolleybus. This would mean that there were trolleybusses in Warsaw before WWII. Could anyone add some info or at least point me to some good source? [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 00:40, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

"Following the Warsaw Act (Ustawa warszawska) of October 27, 2002 the head of the City Council is the president of Warsaw"

The posts of President of Warsaw and Chairman of the City Council are separate. The chairman is just one of the councilors - chosen by them and from among them. Such is the case in every city, Warsaw is not an exepction. Current chairman is Jan Maria Jackowski. user:Myszodorn 18 Dec 2004

[edit] Voting - Warschau/Warsaw

VOTING for WARSCHAU or Warsaw <-- That page is a vote to decide the usage of the name of Warschau/Warsaw--Schlesier 08:27, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Invitation to voting on a subpage to a user page!
 ;->>
--Ruhrjung 21:02, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
There is no need for that... i've mostly heard warsaw instead of warschau, and warsaw is easier to say.r9tgokunks 03:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the Warsaw City Council should be the institution we shoild listen to as far as naming is concerned. And they always use Warsaw in English language materials, while Warschau is used in German language materials (and I think Dutch). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.205.80.156 (talk) 17:51, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hypocrisy once again

Since When do Poles tell native English speakers like me that I have to use 'Slavic Polish' in order to name places in Poland? The English language has its own variants of place names across the entire world and not just Poland. Warsaw is indeed Warsaw in the English language. We have our OWN names for places and will not be told that we have to use 'Slavic language' names that are NOT Phonetic to the English tongue. Shame on these 'extremist' Nationalistic Poles for your Arrogance in this regard. This message is for the cool Poles who understand the history of the 'English language'.. Stay Cool.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filsdegilbert (talk • contribs) 20:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Who exactly says anything about Slavic names? Xx236 (talk) 08:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] available pictures for use in wikipedia

Hi, I have some pictures of Warsaw (took them when I visited the town in april 2005)

they are now available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Deep750

[edit] Too many images

There are many very grand and beautiful images in this article. In fact, there are too many! I will remove a couple of duplicates, but please, let someone more familiar with the city than I am remove a few more. NatusRoma 19:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I removed some pictures. I also threw out the image of Saxonian Garden from 1900, since it pictured the Russian church which denizens of Warsaw hated so much that they pulled it down as soon as Poland gained independence. No reason to use it as a symbol of Warsaw now.--SylwiaS | talk 14:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
There are still too many images in the article. I just had to remove one, because there was not enough text to support it -- it was spilling over, overlapping a template. Worse, nearly all of the included images depict palaces, etc. Isn't this a bit phony? Surely a more representative depiction of the city is warranted in an encyclopedia -- Wikipedia is not a tourist/propaganda brochure. As a native Varsovian, I share the pride in the city, and I realize the precious nature of its reconstructions. Just the same, let's have a little bit of detachment and objectivity is image selection here and in describing Warsaw to the world. --Mareklug talk 10:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Still too many. Particularly in the 'Transport' section, images which have nothing to do with transport. They only pad the page unnecessarily. Move them to Wiki Commons, or whatever. Or I'll delete them....
Jotel 07:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coat of Arms

hai guys,

just to mention it; the CoA you have in the article is different to the one of the offical website http://um.warszawa.pl/index.php (very small on the left) and as well different to the one on BIP http://www.bip.warszawa.pl/ ....Sicherlich Post 08:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The CoA is the same, only the one used here is additionally decorated with the Virtuti Militari order. Warsaw received the order, so I think it's ok to use it.--SylwiaS | talk 14:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
See Coat of Arms of Warsaw for details, all is there. //Halibutt 10:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] We need a pic of a destroyed Warsaw in the hist section

Perhaps the Royal castle? Ksenon 16:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Do Polish football/soccer players need this prominence??

Famous football (soccer) players from Poland

  • Jacek Krzynowek, Poland's star football player
  • Pawel Janas, Polish football coach
  • Grzegorz Lato, Former Polish football player
  • Frankowski's, Present Polish star player
  • Poland's Ernst, Football player who scored 4 goals aginst Brazil
  • Jerzy Dudek (Liverpool); Tomasz Kuszczak (West Bromwich Albion); Jacek Bak (RC Lens), Michal Zewlakow (Anderlecht Brussels), Tomasz Rzasa (SC Heerenveen), Bartosz Bosacki (FC Nurnberg), Tomasz Hajto (FC Nurnberg); Mariusz Lewandowski (Shakhtar Donetsk), Jacek Krzynowek (Bayer Leverkusen), Kamil Kosowski (FC Kaiserslautern), Arkadiusz Radomski (SC Heerenveen); Andrzej Niedzielan (NEC Nijmegen), Grzegorz Rasiak (Derby County) are all football players from Poland
  • [[Jerzy Dudek], Polish goalkeeper


I've cleaned up this section, but wonder whether it really deserves this kinbd of prominence at this point in the article. Overall, I feel it's a rather trivial aspect of Warsaw's history. Thoughts? Delete? Move to bottom? Vivaverdi 22:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

  • No, of course not, esp. since that this list has nothing (or next to nothing) in common with Warsaw. agnus 15:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Then we have two votes for removal; I'll go ahead and do that.

Vivaverdi 16:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The surviving Home Army fighters were rounded up by the NKVD and either murdered or deported to Siberia.

This statement is generally true, but there were no Home Army fighters in Warsaw 1945. Later rather the UB persecuted them. Something should be corrected. Xx236 08:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Not true entirely. There were Home Army fighters on the right bank of Vistula (Praga) in 1944-45 when Red Army took over this part. My grandpa was one of them... it's a fact.

[edit] History of Warsaw

The history is getting rather long, I'd recommend creation of the subarticle. At the same time I'd suggest adding some inlince citations and DYKing the new article.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the Ghetto section, the sentence "When the fighting ended, the survivors were massacred." is awkward. If they were massacred, they weren't survivors. Also, when you look at the detail article on Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, you find that a number of people escaped the ghetto and went on to fight in the Warsaw uprising and in Israel. For this reason, I recommend this sentence be altered to "When the fighting ended, anyone who hadn't escaped the Ghetto was massacred."74.93.79.118 22:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup suggestions

There are a large number of external links in this article which go to sites that do not appear to source or confirm anything in the article. Per WP:EL, external links should only be used in order to link to material which sources article content, and generally not to such sites as image galleries. Seraphimblade 17:33, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

"The fans of both clubs are in the permanent hostility. On the Warsaw Derby they're often going to mixing-up. But odds are rather unevens: very greater part of Warsaw roots with love and loyalty to Legia. There is so meagre group of Polonia fans." Seriously, this is just too embarrassing! I find it advisable to remove it as soon as possible.

In the Geography section, the word "straddles" links to an inappropriate article. We could link it to "straddle" in Wictionary, but it seems to me that "straddle" is well known and maybe we should just delete the link.Peter Chastain (talk) 02:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] President

In Polish cities with more then 100,000 inhabitants the head of city is president, not mayor! See: President of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz. OTB 23:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You are wrong. With more than 50,000 inhabitants. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.244.19.44 (talk) 12:51, August 20, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voice in discussion.

pl:wikipedysta:Radomil

This Wikipedian erases all articles does not please him. 83.23.48.13 20:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Proof is here:

pl:Wikipedia:SDU/Zabytki romańskie w Polsce

[edit] 1795-1807

The South Prussia article states that Warsaw was located in that province (administration presumably based on [1]), and the New East Prussia article states that province's capital was Białystok. However, de:Neuostpreußen states that Warsaw was the capital of New East Prussia, which matches some internet maps ([2] [3] [4]) and some of my atlases. Did Prussian provincial borders change from 1795-1807 (suggested by [5])? Olessi 06:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] murdered or deported to Siberia

I believe that many soldiers joined the Polish-Soviet army. The terror was more selective than stated here.Xx236 08:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

Could someone knowledgeable add the etymology behind Warszawa? Olessi 17:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Warszawa, oryginally Warszewa, means owned by Warsz. A legendary version is that there was a fisherman Wars and his wife Sawa, hence logos Wars and Sawa.Xx236 10:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I created an Etymology section listing this information. Olessi 20:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nowe Linki

[edit] all this "world city" stuff

Is the fact that some obscure institution named Warsaw "gamma world city" eight years ago so important to place it in second sentence of this article? 62.179.74.97 18:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

What's your problem, man?

[edit] Why is Warsaw Weird

Why is this city so weird?

...and yours?

Well, I think it's weird too. Mostly it's the fault of Hitler and his systematic destruction of the town in 1944, oh and the fact that nearly all the intelligensia (ie anyone who would willingly spend his/her spare time reading a book) were wiped out in the Warsaw Rising of 1944 and subsequent Nazi backlash. From 1945 onwards the city was repopulated by countryfolk (aka peasants), with no experience of city life; thus Poles like to joke, Warsaw is the biggest village (in the derogatory sense) in Poland. So in conclusion, Warsaw's not really a city at all, and certainly doesn't feel like one if you have any experience of cities in the West (or even Budapest, Riga and Prague). 87.96.22.165 (talk) 22:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)Woofgrrr

[edit] History of Warsaw copyvio

Nearly all of of the "History of Warsaw" section was nearly copied verbatim from http://www.luketravels.com/warsaw/history.htm (some bits of the original were omitted, but nearly every sentence was a word-for-word copy of the original), so I have deleted all the copyvio text, and I'm sorry to say that there is now almost nothing left in that section. I will now look to see if I can find a previous version of this section which was not a copyvio. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:42, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

We need to look more carefully at this. Looking back through the history of the page, I found that this material has slowly evolved over time since a big chunk of it was added wholesale about 4 years ago: [6]. Much of the text is the same as then, but on my brief examination it looks like a lot of subsequent minor changes have been made to that text and incorporated into the other site, which leads me to believe that the "luketravels.com" site ripped off Wikipedia rather than the other way around. Mangojuicetalk 04:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I've found roughly the same thing - the history section appears to have grown over time. Luke's site acts pretty flaky on the waybackmachine, but I can see there was an update for the warsaw related information earlier this year. Still looking. Kuru talk 04:41, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Having checked the article's history at length, I reached the same conclusion, but was too tired to finish my post here before I went to bed. I am now nearly certain that the copyvio was from wikipedia to Luke's.

First, I started checking back through the history of the Warsaw article as Mangouice did, and reached the same conclusion: that the wikipedia text has evolved steadily over the last four years. To my mind, that pointed to WP probably being the original, but I wasn't sure, so I checked from the other angle.

The http headers of http://www.luketravels.com/warsaw/history.htm show a creation date of 03 July 2007 04:56:57. I would usually see that date as a last-revised date rather than a creation date, but having checked the waybackmachine I find that while much of Luke's site has been archived there since 2002, the Warsaw/History page is not archived at all. Since notes on the wayback site say that pages don't usually show up in their archives for about 6 months, I concluded that http://www.luketravels.com/warsaw/history.htm was probably created sometime up to 2 months before 03 July 2007. To test this theory, I checked back through the wikipedia versions preceding that date, and as I proceed backwards I found the minor textual differences receding until I reached this version of 4 June 2007, which seems to me to be an exact match for most of Luke's version (Luke has added extra paras near the end, the but the first dozen or so paras are identical).

On this basis, I'm about as certain as I can be that the copying was done from wikipedia to Luke's, and that on this basis, the text of Warsaw#History should be reverted to the version before I removed the apparent copyvio: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warsaw&oldid=177618180

Is that OK with everyone else? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:28, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. Actually, this article is pretty long, it might make sense to fork that section out to a subarticle, per WP:SUMMARY. Mangojuicetalk 22:04, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
That's what was suggested further up in the page, and it is in part what Kitia was trying to do ... but it does require that a summary be written to go in this article. Merely copying the content to a separate article is just a content fork.
Anyway, since there is one voice in favour and none against, I will now restore the deleted text. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trams

"In 1941 the present colours of the cars were introduced (yellow and red, in the Flag of Warsaw colours. Up to this point, the trams were painted either white and red, or entirely red)." This information is at least partly inaccurate. I live in Warsaw since 1974 (when I was born) and remember white and red trams. They can also be seen on some postcards from the seventies, as well as in an photoalbum that my parents have at home. 77.113.106.169 (talk) 10:00, 12 April 2008 (UTC)