Plac Unii Lubelskiej, Warsaw

Plac Unii Lubelskiej is a historic Warsaw square whose roads converge in a large roundabout, with tram tracks cutting through the junction. The dense ring of tall tenements gives this traffic hub the character of a city room rather than a mere crossing. This place was laid out in seventeen seventy as the far southern circle in King Stanisław August Poniatowski’s planned route towards Ujazdów Castle.

Notice the paired Mokotów Tollhouses beside Puławska Street: Jakub Kubicki designed these classical gateway buildings, completed in eighteen eighteen, for entry into the city. The square’s present name recalls the Union of Lublin, the agreement of fifteen sixty-nine that joined Poland and Lithuania in the Commonwealth. Warsaw adopted that name in July nineteen nineteen, marking three and a half centuries since the union.

On the façade at Bagatela fifteen, a commemorative plaque was installed in nineteen ninety-nine through support from Lublin’s residents. This junction has also carried Warsaw’s harsher history. During the Warsaw Uprising, Polish resistance fighters seized it on the first of August nineteen forty-four, but later attacks failed and the unit withdrew after grave losses.

German forces then murdered local Polish civilians in reprisal, while nearby tenements and a tollhouse were burned. The rebuilt streetscape is protected as cultural heritage.