Curved six and seven storey stone apartment blocks ring a wide traffic circle, with arcades and candelabra lamp posts along the boulevard that crosses it.
What Plac Konstytucji looks like
Five streets meet at a wide traffic circle ringed by six and seven storey apartment blocks in pale sandstone and polished granite. Curved facades carry classicist cornices and pilasters, and worker relief sculptures about four metres tall are set into several of the walls. Three trident shaped candelabra lamp posts stand along the circle.
A two storey arcade runs along Marszałkowska Street at the base of , repeated in colonnades at the other corners. Tram tracks and bus stops ring the square. Marszałkowska, Koszykowa, Piękna, Śniadeckich and Waryńskiego all converge on it. The circle's centre holds a car park.
Hotel MDM stands on the southern corner, where Marszałkowska meets Waryńskiego. Built between 1950 and 1952 alongside the rest of the square, it runs seven storeys to a flat roof and an attic storey, with the same cornice line as the blocks beside it. A neon sign reading MDM tops its roofline, lit after dark.
A 1952 tile mosaic, "The Four Seasons," fills one of the arcades. Its figures sit inside a wreath pattern. A side passage off the square's southwest corner, , cuts between two of the blocks. A metro station planned for the square's north side, at Marszałkowska and Hoża, remains unbuilt.
Shot in Plac Konstytucji
Andrzej Wajda shot the first scene of Niewinni czarodzieje at Hotel MDM in the summer of 1959, on the square's southern corner. Netflix's Hiacynt filmed night exteriors in the streets around the square in 2021, to recreate Warsaw of the second half of the 1980s.
Niewinni czarodzieje (Innocent Sorcerers), 1960
Hotel MDM
Hotel MDM, the real building on the square's southern corner, was Warsaw's first hotel built after the Second World War. Andrzej Wajda shot the opening scene of Niewinni czarodzieje here, before the production moved on to Torwar, the Old Town Market Square and five other Warsaw locations. Street View
Hiacynt, 2021
Played the 1980s
Piotr Domalewski's 2021 Netflix crime film Hiacynt filmed night exteriors in the streets around the square, to recreate the darkened city centre of the second half of the 1980s. The same night sequence used Warsaw Śródmieście station and Elektoralna and Chłodna streets elsewhere in the centre. Street View
Nowa Huta's own central square, now Plac Ronalda Reagana, was built between 1952 and 1956 on the same socialist realist programme as Plac Konstytucji. Five broad avenues radiate from its arcaded, pentagonal plaza. Its blocks lean toward a Renaissance derived classicism with projecting bays rather than MDM's flatter facades, so wide establishing shots of the arcaded socialist realist square read more convincingly than close texture comparisons. Try searching arcaded socialist realist square now.
Strausberger Platz in Berlin, Germany
Strausberger Platz is an oval roundabout at the head of Karl-Marx-Allee, built from 1952 under the same socialist classicist programme as Plac Konstytucji, ringed by curved apartment blocks. Berlin's blocks run taller with deep red ceramic cladding and a fountain fills the centre where Plac Konstytucji keeps a car park, so a shot holding to the socialist classicist roundabout's building line reads more consistently than one that takes in the middle. Try searching socialist classicist roundabout now.
Independence Avenue in Minsk, Belarus
Independence Avenue's postwar rebuild used the same monumental socialist classicist formula from Soviet pattern books of the early 1950s. Apartment blocks line it at a similar height. The avenue runs straight rather than circling a traffic island, so Minsk's monumental postwar avenue blocks read better in long, straight on shots than in anything turning a corner the way Plac Konstytucji does. Try searching monumental postwar avenue blocks now.
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