Aleja 3 Maja, Warszawa

Aleja 3 Maja is a Powiśle street running beside both flanks of the Poniatowski Bridge viaduct, from the riverside expressway to the foot of Warsaw’s escarpment. Its name honours the Constitution of the Third of May. During the eighteen-twenties, this route was laid through a tree-lined cutting, linking Solec with Nowy Świat and the riverfront’s port, timber yards, and workshops.

A railway serving a carriage factory and the port sliced across it later that century. The vast bridge viaduct arrived during the years before the Great War, and the old cutting disappeared beneath its construction. In nineteen sixteen, Warsaw gave the avenue its present commemorative name.

German occupiers later replaced it with Polish and German wartime names. After the war, trams used tracks here, with a short-lived depot beneath the viaduct and an unusual triangular turning arrangement. Near number five, a small remnant of earlier paving and tram rail survives. A memorial plaque fixed to a viaduct pillar commemorates people murdered by German forces during the Warsaw Uprising.