Warsaw in the 17th century. Foreigners wrote that it was a sea of mud and the dirtiest city in Europe
In 1600, Warsaw kept 12,000 inhabitants, not even the authorities of the first generation of cities in Poland. Half a century was enough and the population almost tripled. The location of reviews for the new capital, however, was not always flattering.
No one has ever made a Polish official decision to move the capital from Krakow to Warsaw. From the end of the 16th century, a city in Mazovia, quite quickly and without complaintsit became the place of residence of the house of reign staff and the point of view of the Seyms.
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At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Sigismund III Vasa already he moved to Warsaw for good. So there were magnates, noblemen, courtiers and foreign envoys who gathered there. And the townspeople began to multiply their fortune – not to supply the shekh to the Nassyms, but to the ever-hungry Nassyms, but not to take care of the monarch’s coin.
Great repairs
The changes have progressed in a phenomenal arrival, they proclaim that there will be confusion and the participants will occur. The magnates bought the areas near the city, building there the reign of the coat of arms or tubes and premises, which were not under the sign of jurisdiction.
They swell in the eyes Warsaw has become a chaotic collection of encounters with metals and unbelievable copper. The old town, enclosed by a wall, was only twelve hectares, densely occupied with tenement houses and churches in the ancient baroque style.
North of it, the unbounded and full of dilapidated wooden houses New Town was only two hectares larger. Because in the 1620s, in the 1720s, in fear of the Turks of the Tatars, the suburbs around the world were earthen, embanked, repaired and treated over a ha ha ha area. And not all juridics were inside the fortifications.
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A city of contrasts
In the first half of the 17th century, during the reign of Władysław IV Vasa and in the first years of the reign of Jan Kazimierz, the entire chessboard of districts and towns could have about thirty thousand inhabitants. Gdańsk with its population of 50,000 was still bigger. The appropriate level of entry is, for comparison, a metropolis with almost 400,000 inhabitants.
An Englishman who had not been introduced to Warsaw told in horror that this was the dirtiest city he had ever visited. But Georg Braun, the monument author of the collection of more than five collections of panoramas and city maps from all over the world, said with appreciation: “You do not have a city not only in Poland, but in the whole of Sarmatia, which, according to Warsaw, you can have”.
How unknown, strange and heterogeneous it seemed in Polish capitals is also perfectly demonstrated by the notes of people accompanying Ludwika Maria Gonzaga – the French wife of Władysław IV, who delivered her to the city in 1646.
French nuns, invited by Ludwika Maria to the Vistula River, said with delight:
The building is here [warszawskie] it is happening and it is impressive that we were in a few. In the sources of origin made of wood from the local houses there are houses, but it is not a house, but it results from common sources that wooden houses are without bricks from brick or stone.
Warsaw’s sea of mud
The chronicler of the queen’s journey from France to Poland, Father Jean Le Laboureur, was not so enthusiastic. He wrote about the church of bones and monasteries that they are “quite badly built”. The “messy”, uncontrolled “spread” of buildings was also a threat. In a word: chaos.
Overall, the Polish capital is the seat of the capital. He praised the progress. The city changed a year later, get more beautiful every year, get some extra money from the title.
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His skepticism might, in a way, be due to the weather. The French noted that Warsaw was still not fully paved. This fact suited King Władysław. When a few years before the Polish monarch had traveled to Vienna, it was necessary not through the city, sideways, at the embankments, straight to the castle, not to block and eliminate problems “on the cobblestones”.
For people not so sensitive to the creation of Warsaw streets, which, however, are people’s bane. After downpours, especially in the period of thaw, they turned into rivers of mud. Breaking through them required, gave birth, destroyed property, stained clothes, and in extreme cases, it would almost drown.
Surprised foreigners did not even hand out that they were in the Polish capital, where the puddle of horses reaches up to their bellies.
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The text is based on my new book. Ladies of the silver age to the history of the ruling ruler of the Baroque era, but also of the capital city and the country to which they went. You can buy the publication on Empik.com. Thematic bibliography is in the book.