This city is not pretty, but it has something that makes it beautiful

Warsaw will never make it onto most-beautiful-city lists. It isn’t even Poland’s most beautiful city, and the predictable tourist will look in vain for big-name sights or a significant old town.

What makes Warsaw beautiful is its soul. This is a gracious, cultured city whose residents love parks and cafes and get misty-eyed over a composer who died 174 years ago but whose music encapsulates the romantic, sad, yearning Polish spirit.

Locals leave yellow roses below a statue of Fryderyk Chopin, and passers-by stop to listen to his Mazurka in A Minor before walking on.

A monument to Chopin in the Lazienki Park at autumn, Warsaw, Poland.Credit: iStock

I bet they know it’s Chopin’s Mazurka in A Minor, too. I only know because it says so on the granite bench I’m sitting on. I push a button, the music swells, and people pause.

On a regular tour, I might have missed this, but my country-intensive Poland journey with Collette isn’t rushed. We’ve covered the Warsaw basics, but my afternoon is free, and tour manager Marta Adamo proves her worth by suggesting the Chopin trail: I can see the city’s nicest parts and find out how Chopin coaxed Poland’s soul from a piano.

I start off on Krakowskie Przedmiescie, old Warsaw’s main drag. The street runs for kilometres past lovely churches, palaces and university buildings, and forms the heart of the Chopin trail.

Most of the 15 black-granite benches that play Chopin’s music, and detail episodes from his life, lie along this boulevard.

One of the multimedia granite benches playing Chopin – this one a gift from the Kingdom of the Netherlands.Credit: Alamy

Each bench plays an excerpt from one of Chopin’s best-known sonatas, nocturnes or polonaises. QR codes provide longer musical pieces and further information, which could delay you for happy hours in one of the few Warsaw neighbourhoods that preserves pre-war buildings.

The Second World War destroyed most of Warsaw, which has always been battered by wars. Poland ceased to exist before Chopin was born, dismembered by Russia, Prussia and Austria. The Russians were in control in Warsaw.

Chopin fled to France when he was 20 but always pined for Poland. Polish musical influences filled his compositions, which stirred nationalism and annoyed the Russians.

When Chopin died a superstar in 1849, Russian authorities blocked the return of his body, fearing unrest. Chopin’s sister smuggled his heart home inside a jar of cognac beneath her crinoline.

Chopin trail: start in the historic old quarter, Krakowskie Przedmiescie.Credit: iStock

I head to the Church of the Holy Cross, which is a swirl of baroque creaminess and gold. The resting place of Chopin’s heart is marked by a simple plaque flanked by two cupids.

Not far away is Fryderyk Chopin Museum. Poland had to wait until the Russians (as Soviets) were gone a second time before turning this into a Chopin shrine. The impressive interactive museum covers Chopin’s life and displays personal effects, including a lock of his hair and many of his letters, pocket diaries and musical scores.

My last stop, Lazienki Park, is a bus ride away. As Marta promised, following Chopin has brought me to pretty places, and this park is no exception. I’m not here for the pavilions, flowerbeds and chestnut-tree avenues, though, but for the Chopin monument.

An enormous, wildly romantic art nouveau sculpture depicts the composer seated on a rock under a stylised willow tree bent over in a fierce gale. Chopin’s eyes are closed and his hands placed as if playing an invisible piano. Roses bloom in surrounding flowerbeds, and locals lounge on deck chairs.

On Sunday summer afternoons, free Chopin concerts are held on the lawn. No surprise they’re wildly popular. Chopin loved Poland, and Poland loves him back. If musical benches make pedestrians pause, surely these concerts must bring traffic to a standstill, and that’s the beauty of Warsaw.

THE DETAILS

Fly
Emirates flies from Sydney and Melbourne via Dubai to Warsaw. See emirates.com

Tour
Collette’s 11-day, country-intensive, Discovering Poland tour has multiple departures from May to October. There are stays in Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw and Krakow, and visits to Malbork Castle, Czestochowa and Auschwitz. From $3449 a person twin share, including transport, accommodation, guided tours and many meals. Phone [phone], see gocollette.com

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The writer travelled as a guest of Collette.