Things to see in Warsaw

St John's is claimed to be the oldest church in Warsaw. Although a major church in the Mazovian gothic style, completed in the 15th century, St John's was only upgraded from a parish church to a cathedral in 1798. Destroyed during WWII, it has been reconstructed in its original style and features major gothic art works by Wit Stwosz. The cathedral was used in 1764 for the coronation of the last Polish king (Stanislaw II) and for the swearing in of the Sejm (Polish parliament) after the constitution of 1791. The covered footbridge connecting it to the Royal Palace was the result of a failed assassination attempt on King Zygmunt III.

Housed in the Citadel, a solid 19th-century fortress north of the Old Town, this Warsaw museum was once used as a prison for political enemies of the Russian Czars. The lucky inmates were shipped to labour camps in Siberia; the unlucky executed at Brama Straceń (Gate of Execution) on the prison grounds. The original cells are still standing and labelled with some of the prison's more famous residents, and paintings by Alexander Sochaczewski, a former inmate, adorn the walls.

This eerie old prison symbolises the oppression that has haunted Varsovians over the last two centuries. Originally built in the 1830s, at the order of the ruling Czars, the prison incarcerated many victims of the Nazi reign of terror from 1939-1944, when it served as the largest political prison in Poland. A third of the estimated 100,000 detainees never made it out alive. The Nazis tried to dynamite the evidence of their crimes as they left but Pawiak is back as a museum and a testament to Warsaw's seemingly endless ability to suffer and survive.

The Warsaw Rising Museum is a must-see for those with any interest in history and tales of bravery. In order to get a taste of what life in Warsaw must have been like for all Poles during WWII, this thoroughly comprehensive museum shows examples of how residents resisted the German forces through film footage, photographs, recorded interviews, life-size dioramas, soundscapes and informative plaques, written in both Polish and English. Cityscape pictures pinpointing the handful of buildings that survived WWII are located on the museum's elevated viewing platform; they are a grim reminder of the destruction wrought by the Nazis on Warsaw.

Walking through the Royal Castle in Warsaw, you have to constantly remind yourself that most of it was reconstructed between 1971 and 1984, although the darker elements of the décor were actually salvaged from the ruins. The castle, located on a plateau overlooking the Vistula River, was built for the Dukes of Mazovia and expanded when King Zygmunt III Vasa moved the capital to Warsaw. From the early 17th until the late 18th century, this was the seat of the Polish kings. It subsequently housed the parliament and is now a museum displaying tapestries, period furniture, coffin portraits and collections of porcelain and other decorative arts. The castle gardens, which were also badly scarred by the Nazis during WWII, have recently been redesigned and returned to their former glory.