Poland · Masovian Voivodeship · Warsaw
Bielany, Warsaw — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Bielany is a district in north-western Warsaw, named for the white habits of the Camaldolese monks whose walled monastery still stands in Las Bielański.
About Bielany
Where to stay in Bielany
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Bielany is a district of flats rather than hotels, so a bed here is usually a rented apartment on an estate street and the question is which end of the district to take. The metro settles most of it. Line M1 runs north under Bielany through Stare Bielany metro station and Wawrzyszew metro station and ends at Młociny, while Marymoncka Street carries the buses down the eastern side.
Stare Bielany suits you if you want the low inter-war houses around plac Konfederacji and the Camaldolese Church at the end of a walk; Chomiczówka and Wawrzyszew are plainer, blocks of flats with the shops beneath them.
About Bielany
What are the main landmarks in Bielany?
Bielany keeps its landmarks in the monastery wood and the inter-war streets. The Camaldolese Church stands inside Las Bielański with Jan Stefan Wydżga's gatehouse beside it, the Brühl Palace north at Młociny, and Fort II Wawrzyszew, an outer work of the fortress, out west. Płatnicza Street and plac Konfederacji carry the low houses of Stare Bielany, with the Kościół św.
Zygmunta on the square. Saint Mary Magdalene Church serves Wawrzyszew. The Italian Soldiers Cemetery lies on Marymoncka Street.
The Powązki Military Cemetery, with its Katyń and Gloria Victis monuments, is often listed here but stands outside Bielany, in Żoliborz.
What is the history of Bielany?
Bielany was farmland and village before Warsaw reached it. Słodowiec and Wawrzyszew worked mills on the Rudawka, and in the later seventeenth century Jan Stefan Wydżga endowed the Camaldolese monks from the Bielany above Kraków, whose white habits named the ground. Młociny went its own way as a royal holding where Heinrich von Brühl raised a palace.
The forts came in the eighteen-eighties. Warsaw took in Stare Bielany and Słodowiec in 1916, the Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education opened between the wars, and Nasz Dom brought Maryna Falska's orphanage here. Bielany was cut out of Żoliborz as its own district in 1994.
Where is Bielany?
Bielany fills the north-western corner of Warsaw, with Żoliborz along its southern edge, Bemowo to the south-west and the Vistula and Białołęka off to the east.
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Updated September 2026