Description of the attraction
Freta Street, founded in 1300, leads from the Old Town to the New Market. There are several explanations for the origin of the street name. According to one of them, the word "Freta" was taken from medieval Latin and meant "swampy off-road". Another version says that the name of the street comes from the term "Freiheit", which stands for "square in front of the gate, a place for fairs." Be that as it may, but Warsaw grew, the first wooden buildings appeared on this street, the owners of which were mainly Jews. In documents dated 1427, it is said that this street was called Novomeiskaya at that time.
Most of the local shops and residential buildings were destroyed by a fire in 1656. The city authorities came to the conclusion that from now on it is worth erecting any buildings only from solid stone. Within a few years, after the fire, almost all of the houses on Freta Street were restored. They were built in a classical and baroque manner.
After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the Germans almost completely destroyed the Polish capital. Freta Street also suffered. Only in 1950 the restoration of local houses began. They were rebuilt gradually, focusing on archival records, trying to completely repeat the historical buildings.
The most interesting buildings on this street are the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Museum, located in her home, and the Raczynski Palace. The mansion, which houses a collection of objects telling about the life of the famous scientist-chemist Sklodowska-Curie, was also damaged during the Second World War, but was restored. By some miracle, they managed to save a memorial plaque placed on the house before the war.
The Rachinsky Palace, named after its last owners, is now given over to the State Archives.
