Bank Square ( Polish: ''Plac Bankowy'', formerly ''Plac Dzierżyńskiego'') is one of

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

's principal squares. Located in the

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

district, adjacent to the

Saxon Garden The Saxon Garden () is a 15.5–hectare public garden in central ('' Śródmieście'') Warsaw, Poland, facing Piłsudski Square. It is the oldest public park in the city. Founded in the late 17th century, it was opened to the public in 1727 as on ...

and Warsaw Arsenal, it is also a principal public-transport hub, with

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...

and

tram A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...

stops and a Warsaw Metro station.

History

Created in the 19th century, under the

Congress Kingdom Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

, the square was designed to be an elegant area of the country's capital. Notable buildings included the

Palace of the Ministry of Revenues and Treasury The Palace of the Government Commission of Revenues and Treasury () is located at 3/5 Bank Square, Warsaw, Bank Square in Warsaw. It is sometimes simply referred to as the Commission Palace. Currently it is not the home to the named ministry, but s ...

(a building reconstructed by

Antonio Corazzi Antonio Corazzi (1792-1877) was an Italian architect working in Poland from 1819 to 1847, mainly in Neoclassical style. Biography Antonio Corazzi was the son of an impresario of the Avalorati Theatre in Livorno. In 1811, after graduating fro ...

), the

Bank of Poland Bank of Poland may refer to: * Bank Polski, the central bank of Congress Poland (1828-1885) * Bank Polski SA Bank Polski SA, full name Bank Polski Spółka Akcyjna (), was the central bank of the Second Polish Republic. On , Bank Polski SA su ...

and the

Warsaw Stock Exchange The Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) () is a stock exchange in Warsaw, Poland. Founded in 1817, it was located in the Saxon Palace until 1877 when it was moved to the Exchange Building at the Saxon Garden. Currently, it is located at ul. Książęca ...

(also by Corazzi). The square was originally

triangular A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three sides, one of the basic shapes in geometry. The corners, also called ''vertices'', are zero-dimensional points while the sides connecting them, also called ''edges'', are one-dimensional ...

-shaped. Between 1875 and 1878, the Great Synagogue was built on the eastern side of the square, across from the palace. At the time of its building, it was the largest synagogue in Warsaw and one of the largest in the world. After the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the ...

in 1943, the Nazi occupiers blew up the building, destroying it. In the 1944

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...

, the remaining buildings on the square were destroyed. After the war, city planners reconstructed only its historic western part, changing it into a

rectangle In Euclidean geometry, Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is a Rectilinear polygon, rectilinear convex polygon or a quadrilateral with four right angles. It can also be defined as: an equiangular quadrilateral, since equiangular means that a ...

. The synagogue was not rebuilt and currently in the same location is the Błękitny Wieżowiec office building. Under the communist

Polish People's Republic The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

, the square was renamed ''Plac Dzierżyńskiego'' (Dzierżyński's Square) after

Felix Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (; ; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed Iron Felix (), was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka a ...

, a Polish-born communist politician and founder of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...

political police. In 1951, a monument to Dzierżyński (by Zbigniew Dunajewski) was erected in the southern part of the square. Four decades later, in 1989, the statue's toppling helped mark the

fall of communism in Poland Autumn, also known as fall (especially in US & Canada), is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southern Hemispher ...

Today

Bank Square's present-day landmarks include ''Błękitny Wieżowiec'' (the Blue Skyscraper), and the former seat of the Ministry of Treasury now serves as Warsaw's

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

, the seat of the

President of Warsaw The Mayor of Warsaw (officially in ) is the head of the executive of the capital of Poland elected directly during local elections for a term of five years. Overview The first city mayor of Warsaw was Jan Andrzej Menich (1695–1696). Th ...

and the provincial office of the Mazovia province. In 2001, a monument to

Juliusz Słowacki Juliusz Słowacki (; ; ; 4 September 1809 – 3 April 1849) was a Polish Romantic poet. He is considered one of the " Three Bards" of Polish literature — a major figure in the Polish Romantic period, and the father of modern Polish drama. Hi ...

, by Edward Wittig (actually designed in 1932), was erected on the spot previously occupied by the statue of Feliks Dzierżyński. In front of the Błękitny Wieżowiec, there is a

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or Casting (metalworking), cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to ...

to Stefan Starzyński, the pre-World War II President of Warsaw, by Andrzej Renes.

References

Squares in Warsaw Śródmieście Północne {{Warsaw-geo-stub