CONVERSATIONS IN WARSAW
261
handsome palazzo with softly fluted pilasters and rounded pedi–
ments framing the windows. Alongside the palazw there is a narrow
old street that runs for fifty yards and emerges into the large market
place of the Stare Miasto. Here was a wonderful old baroque city:
a large town square with decorated
fa~ades,
narrow streets with
graceful s6:rollwork signs-a unity and proportion of jewel-like
grace.
I was completely unprepared for this view, which no doubt
added to my enchantment and delight. And my feelings were
further heightened by the realization of the sacrifice and devotion
that must have gone into the detailed reconstruction of this section.
Over ninety-five percent of Warsaw proper had been razed by the
Nazis after the 1944 insurrection. Section after section had been sys–
tematically demolished, leaving only fields of rubble. But so strong
is
the Polish sense of the past, of tradition, that despite the enormous
cost and the obvious fact that the money and labor could more
"usefully" have gone into the building of large blocks of flats, the
authorities decided to reconstruct the old city, the adjacent "new
city," and the medieval city wall precisely as they had stood two and
three centuries ago. The job itself was possible, I learned later, only
because of a "find" of old architectural plans in the Dresden Mu–
seum. The
fa~ades
were reconstructed from some paintings of
Canelleto, Bolleto and other Venetian painters of the seventeenth
century who had visited Warsaw; the proportions and detail from
old site drawings. With touching devotion, the old city had
been rebuilt inch by inch. Yet to stand in the old city was more than
being in a "museum." One sensed
here~n
the buildings, in the fact
of their reconstruction-the deep link with Europe and its tradi–
tional Catholic culture that no transient politics could erase. The
contrast with the drabness of East Berlin and even with the polished
modernity of West Berlin, which I had left that morning, was strik–
ing. Some things, I know, are decided on first encounter: love of a
woman, attachment to a city, the taste of food. I knew, immediately,
I
was
in love with Warsaw.
To my great relief, the telephone system worked simply. I had
feared, as
is
often the case in France, that one would have to give
the number to the concierge and then wait. Luckily, each room
