Warsaw: the Phoenix City
Warsaw: the Phoenix City
Wednesday 30 September – Sunday 4 October
Start time/location: 7:00pm/Hotel Gromada, Warsaw
End time/location: 1pm/central Warsaw
Join us on our tour to Warsaw, a city that ranks 2nd on The New York Times list of 52 best travel destinations for 2026.
Warsaw has experienced a building boom in the last 20 years including many new museums and we will visit the POLIN museum of Polish Jewish history (2014) and Thomas Phifer’s brand new Museum of Contemporary Art (2025). We will also discover some exciting new stations on Warsaw’s metro system. From the interwar period we’ll see the Zoliborz suburb (1930s), drawing inspiration from Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities and buildings including the steel framed Prudential Tower (1933), once the sixth tallest skyscraper in Europe and which survived being hit by 1,000 artillery shells in World War Two. Communist era Warsaw has some of the best of Poland's socialist realist architecture and on our trip we’ll see the gigantic Soviet style Palace of Culture and Learning (1955) and the downtown Marszalkowska Housing District (1950–52).
Warsaw has many architectural surprises and we will see the French Embassy (1970) with façade panels by Jean Prouvé, Oskar Hansen’s uncompromising Przyczółek Grochowski housing estate (1968–73), the only iteration of his plans for huge linear cities, and the so-called ‘Lemon Squeezer', The Temple of Divine Providence - built in 2016, the church, one of the largest in Poland, cost around £40 million to build.
Eddie Tulasiewicz's love of C20 architecture dates from the demolition of the Firestone Building on the Great West Road in the 1970s. He has worked on the BBC-2 architecture series ‘Building Sights’, is an expert on church heritage and has led C20 Society tours to Katowice and Gdynia/Gdansk.
While we can't recommend any hotel directly, Hotel Gromada seems like a great option.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact lukas@c20society.org.uk
C20 Members only £435
(Included in the price: 2 days of coach travel, 1 day ticket for public transport, one dinner, headsets; and a contribution to the casework and campaigning activities of the Society)
Numbers limited to 25
C20 Society is not liable for any other costs including travel, accommodation, and meals. It is strongly recommended that you take out travel insurance, and read C20's cancellation policy and disclaimer click here.
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Above: View of Warsaw featuring Palace of Culture and Learning (1955). Photo by Dora Pankonin (CC).
The Twentieth Century Society is an IHBC (Institute of Historic Building conservation) recognised CPD provider and a registered charity, no 1110244