Plac Trzech Krzyży, Warszawa

Plac Trzech Krzyży is a historic Warsaw square on the Royal Route, shaped by an eighteenth-century Calvary route and the statue of Saint John of Nepomuk. It also commemorates Jewish children who survived the occupation by trading here after escaping the Warsaw Ghetto.

Plac Trzech Krzyży is Warsaw’s historic square and busy road junction on the Royal Route, where Nowy Świat meets Aleje Ujazdowskie. Its name comes from a devotional landscape created here in the eighteenth century. Around seventeen twenty-five, King Augustus the Strong funded a Calvary route beginning here, marked by columns carrying gilded crosses.

A statue of Saint John of Nepomuk was added nearby in seventeen fifty-six; the cross he holds supplied the name that endured. Notice the saint’s statue on the church garden: it is the surviving link to that earlier crossroads. The square later became a formal urban space, with the Church of Saint Alexander built from eighteen eighteen to eighteen twenty-five.

During the German occupation, this place held a far harsher story. Jewish children who had fled the Warsaw Ghetto made a living here by selling cigarettes, matches, and newspapers, often to German soldiers. They faced blackmailers and the nearby Gestapo, yet formed a community and received false papers through the Jewish underground.

A commemorative plaque on the Ministry of Economy building honours their courage and survival. War wrecked much of the surrounding area during the Warsaw Uprising. The present square carries all those layers at once: pilgrimage route, civic crossroads, wartime witness, and a major passage through Warsaw.