Description:

Though now Warsaw is the safest city in Poland, some 200 years ago walking the streets in the evening could be quite a dangerous adventure. In late 18th century guidebook advised visitors to to keep sabre or sword ready while walking to avoid hooking by criminals who used ropes to catch and tie up their victims. There were no street lamps in most parts of the city and palaces of the nobility neighbored with poor wooden dwellings. This social contrast between ostentatiously rich aristocracy and the poor fueled hostility and crime.

During this tour we will tell you the darker and rather unknown chapter of the Old Town’s history. We will be talking about thieves and pickpockets which became real plague of the city and were so cheeky to set up… a Thieves Academy. By showing you former prisons and even a site of public executions we’ll try to figure out why the city so often failed in maintaining public order.

During this tour you will:

Understand why city authorities tolerated even illegal brothels

Discover how innkeepers smuggled alcohol to the city

See a former house of the town executioner

Visit a street which once had only 14 buildings – 7 brothels and 7 inns!

Jewish Praga

• It is possible also to visit jewish cemetery on Bródno with world’s largest collection of pilled up tombstones, remnants of burial ground for about 250000 individuals (est. time 1,5h).