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South of the Palac Staszica (Staszic Palace), Krakowskie Przedmiescie becomes Nowy Swiat (New World), an area first settled in the mid-seventeenth century. This wide boulevard, is currently being redeveloped, giving way to shops and cafes . The Nowy Swiat cafe, on the corner with Swietokrzyska, has long been a favoured meeting point for the city's cultural elite, while the Blikle further down still produces the cakes for which it's been famed since 1869. Numerous cultural luminaries have inhabited this street, the most famous being Joseph Conrad, who once lived at no. 45. A left turn down ul. Ordynacka brings you to the Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina (Chopin Museum; daily except Tues 10am-2pm; 5zl), housed in the late-seventeenth-century Palac Ostrogski on ul. Okolnik, which also forms the headquarters of the Towarzystwo im. Fryderyka Chopina (Chopin Society). Memorabilia on display include the last piano he played, now used for occasional concerts. Monday evening concerts are held here throughout the summer months (May-Sept) and there are also regular performances in Park Lazienkowski and at Zelazowa Wola. The Society organizes the International Chopin Piano Competition held every five years. The neo-Renaissance Zamoyski Palace , off to the left of Nowy Swiat at the end of ul. Foksal, is one of the few Warsaw palaces you can actually see inside. In 1863, an abortive attempt to assassinate the tsarist governor was made here; as a consequence the palace was confiscated and ransacked by Cossacks, who hurled a grand piano used by Chopin out of the window of his sister's flat in the palace. These days it's a suitably elegant setting for an architectural institute, boasting a restaurant and a nice quiet cafe open to the public, with terrace seating in the summer. Round one side of the palace, an outwardly unassuming building houses the Galeria Foksal (Mon-Fri noon-5pm), one of the better contemporary galleries in the city, with a regular programme of temporary exhibitions by artists both Polish and foreign. It's been something of a cult place for arty avant-gardists ever since the early 1960s, when it became the first Warsaw gallery to host happenings arranged by renowned Cracovian performance artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor. Further down Nowy Swiat, the concrete monster on the southern side of the junction with al. Jerozolimskie was for decades the headquarters of the now defunct Polish communist party . After a pleasingly ironic stint as the new Warsaw Stock Exchange (now relocated to premises nearby), it is now leased out to various private companies who sport their logos from the roof.
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