[ Aug.2016 ] On the last day of our stay in Warsaw, we joined the Chopin Tour.
This time the guide who came to pick us up at our accommodation was a fairly old man called Yasha.
Unfortunately the weather was not good and we often had to have our umbrellas open.
We visited a few places related to Chopin’s life, for example the church where he performed for the first time, where they lived within the site of a high school where his father was teaching French, another house they lived after moving from the high school house where his youngest sister died and so on.
While they lived in this house in 1830, the November Uprising happened.
This was a Polish armed rebellion against the Russian Empire.
When this happened, Chopin was in Vienna and, taking the advice of his friends and supporters, he moved to Paris and never returned to Warsaw.
He died in Paris.
Before his death, he asked his sister, Ludowika to take his heart back to Poland.
So his heart is now in the Holy Cross Church.
We did not see his heart itself, but saw the monument.
There are black benches in many places around the city related to Chopin.
When you press a button on the bench, you can hear piano music.
When we went to see the Chopin Statue in the park, it was raining very hard.
The design of the statue looked very modern, but it was made in 1907.
During WW2, it was destroyed, but because there was a small model, they could remake it as it was.
Actually most of Warsaw is remade.
There are hardly any originals left.
One thing which helped them to reconstruct the city was the paintings by Canaletto, the Italian painter.
He painted many scenes of 18th century Warsaw faithfully and that helped them to rebuild many buildings.
