Travel /
Whats your favourite Polish city and why? [132]
While in Warsaw you may perhaps consider visiting the "Pompeii. Life in the shadow of a vulcano" hi-tech exibition by Samsung on the National Stadium which came directly from Naples in Italy and they say it is magnificent. But the exibition was shown in the British Museum in London in 2013 where it was nominated the "cultural event of the year", so you may have seen it already.
In Wilanów Palace there is this collection of "coffin portaits", a distinctively Polish phenomenon which did not occur elswhere in Europe, they say. It is part of their general painting collection.
I received two couples of British people over the recent years showing them Warsaw and every time I was surprised at the things they liked best. These were rather short, 2 to 3 day visits, so they could see much less than you. One of the couple was fascinated by the walk over the roof of the new building of the University Library. The other were spending hours at the exibition in the same University Library entitled "London - the capital of Poland" or something like that, devoted to Polish political and cultural life in London during the Second World War, but I think they had close friends down there in the UK who were war-time exiles from Poland. The lady of that couple was a chemistry teacher and was particulary interested in seeing the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum. This museum is in the New Town of Warsaw, in the building where the then Maria Skłodowska was born in 1867 and used to live there with her parents until she left Poland for Paris in 1891. My friend pointed my attention to the fact who is on the photos showing the scientists of the time: "Look, these are all men and the only woman among them is Marie Curie!". (Something like the pictures from the European summits in the 1980s where the only woman on them was Mrs Margret Thatcher and which some newspapers were calling a "group photograph with a lady".) The lady of the other couple observed that the portraits of Polish gentry in Wilanów Palace were quite different than the ones showing British gentry of the time (posing, smiles, dress) she saw in the UK.
As for Wrocław, I would be glad to hear your opinion some other time.
