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One of my regular walks when I lived in Warsaw, Poland in 2008 was along the historic Vistula River.  The river portion of my walk ended at the Most Poniatowshiego, the Poniatowski Bridge.  The arched spans of this bridge are frequently photographed but its most interesting features to me were the towers on the west end, each of which housed small businesses.  I spent a couple of evenings enjoying wine and conversation with friends in the top floor of one of those towers and was awed by the fact that we were "in" a bridge.

The bridge was build in 1915 so survived two wars.   In World War II it was badly destroyed and re-bulit to its prior glory.  During the Warsaw Uprising near the end of WWII, the bridge could have been used by the Russians who were camped on the east side of the Vistula.  The Poles sought the Russians help which they kept promising but never delivered all the while the Nazis slaughtered over 200,000 Poles in Warsaw then systematically set about destroying the city.

For some good photos of this bridge, go to   http://www.google.com/images?q=most+poniatowskiego+foto&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=wctJTPX0IMSDnQfa3Z3jDQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB0QsAQwAA&biw=1016&bih=566

Jerry Kolasinski

Austin, Texas

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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