Fat Kaśka (; ) is the popular name for an 18th-century neoclassical

water well A well is an excavation or structure created on the earth by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...

in central

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 ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. It is situated at

Solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...

Avenue (''Aleja Solidarności''), close to the intersection with Andersa Street. It was built in 1787 and designed by

Szymon Bogumił Zug Szymon Bogumił Zug (20 February 1733 – 11 August 1807), born Simon Gottlieb Zug, and also known as Zugk, was a renowned Polish- German classicist architect and designer of gardens. Born in Merseburg in Saxony, he spent most of his life in t ...

at what was then Tłomackie Square, in the center of the Tłomackie

jurydyka Jurydyka (plural: jurydyki, improperly: jurydykas), is a legal entity in the Polish legal system from bygone centuries (originating from Latin: ''iurisdictio'', jurisdiction), denoting a privately owned tract of land within a larger municipality, ...

. The building has the shape of a cylinder. It is decorated with rusticated panels and has a stepped roof crowned with a gilded ball. The well was one of the few water wells built at that stage in Warsaw. There was considerable fighting and destruction around it during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, notably during the

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 ...

and the destruction of the adjacent Great Synagogue by the Germans in May 1943. Immediately after the war, from 1947 to 1949, the road around it (then Leszno Street) was widened for the construction of the

Warsaw W-Z Route 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 ...

. In spite of this, the structure remained almost unchanged. A renovation in 2004 restored its original appearance, including exposing formerly bricked up windows and strengthening its foundations.

Bibliography

* Encyclopedia of Warsaw. Warsaw: PWN, 1994, pp. 229–230. . Śródmieście Północne Infrastructure completed in 1787 1787 establishments in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth {{Poland-struct-stub