BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Polish Culture Quiz- the biggest gift from Stalin to Poland?

Does anybody remember? Probably many of you saw it while travelling to Poland <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Palace of Culture and Science.

[imageBellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

I think it's a monumental building - the ultimate in the sort of 20th-century Gothic that Stalin promoted in that time.

Moscow has several of these kinds of buildings - they form major parts of the city's skylines. Many other former socialist capitals have them, too.

Muscovites tend to like them - perhaps the only complaints I have heard is that they are sometimes "too big". In Warsaw, perhaps they don't like it because it looks so out of place in the surroundings... and, of course, because it reminds them of socialism. In Bucharest the same thing - because of socialism, and because it is too modern in an area of mostly historical and older buildings.

I prefer the Bauhaus in Germany.

Thanks, it looks as like everybody knew the answer. 5 thousand Soviet people worked to build the Palace. About 15-20 people died in accidents, among them 18 years old boy. He was sent there as a part of his military service.

Anyways - the monuments stands and reminds about the epoch.

Actually, I think I have a short memory becasue we talked about it not a long time ago.

Here are beautiful pictures of the Palace:

[url=BellaOnline ALERT: For anti-spam reasons, we restrict the number of URLs allowed in a given post. You have exceeded our maximum number of URLs.

With "gifts' and "friends like that, who needs enemies? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Bob,

people in Warsaw state that the best pictures of Warsaw can be done from... Palace of Culture because... one cannot see the Palace on such picture <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

LOL Jaga. This looks like something from the early 1920's. I can just imagine a giant Gorilla named "King Kong" climbing up the side of that "building". I guess it could stand up to a hurricane if Warsaw had hurricanes comming through. Now we know how Stalin got rid of his trash. <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

It looks strange, I agree, totally "out of place, out of time." However, they find it very useful today, and not only people from Warsaw. The building has got a giant conference hall and all facilities to organize big meetings, concerts, fairs, shows etc.
Even a new Bond movie will be/was partly filmed in the palace, with a crazy chase after the spy through the buildings interiors.