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The area below the Ogrod Saski and west of Krakowskie Przedmiescie is the city's busiest commercial zone. Marszalkowska , the main road running south from the western tip of the gardens, is lined with department stores and clothes shops. South of ul. Swietokrzyska, in the long narrow streets surrounding Chmielna and Zgoda, it's worth scouting around for good-quality items like heavy winter coats and hand-crafted leather goods; Chmielna , recently pedestrianized, is particularly recommended. North of ul. Swietokrzyska, on ul. Kreditowa, the eighteenth-century Ewangelicko-Augsburgski (Lutheran) church is topped with Warsaw's largest dome. The building's excellent acoustics have long made it popular with musicians - Chopin played a concert here at the age of fourteen, and the church still holds regular choral and chamber concerts. Opposite, stands the Muzeum Etnograficzne (Ethnographic Museum; Tues, Thurs & Fri 10am-4pm, Wed 11am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm; 4zl, free on Wed), whose collection of over 30,000 items was virtually destroyed in the war. They've done pretty well to revive the place since then, restocking with African tribal artefacts, Latin American outfits and local folk items. Polish objects take up much of the second floor, a highlight being an absorbing collection of traditional costumes from all over the country. Folklore enthusiasts will enjoy the section devoted to straw men, winter processions and a host of other arcane rural customs. Towering over everything in this part of the city is the Palac Kultury i Nauk (Palace of Culture and Sciences, or PKiN - pronounced "pay-kin" - for short), a gift from Stalin to the Polish people, and not one that could be refused. Officially dubbed "an unshakeable monument to Polish-Soviet friendship" during the communist era but popularly known as "the Russian cake", this neo-Baroque leviathan provokes both intense revulsion and admiration for its sheer audacity - city residents maintain that the best views of Warsaw are from the Palac Kultury i Nauk's top floor - the only viewpoint from which one can't see the palace. A lift whisks visitors up to the thirtieth-floor platform (daily 9am-6pm; 10zl), from where, on a good day, you can see out into the plains of Mazovia. Long despised by Varsovians for casting a Stalinist shadow over their city, the palace is increasingly seen as the grand old lady of the downtown skyline - especially when compared to the rather functional skyscrapers that are beginning to sprout from neighbouring streets. The palace has in any case been shorn of much of its ideological symbolism: slick marketing slogans have replaced the admonitions from Marx and Lenin on the banners over the giant entrance, up the steps from the expansive plac Defilad - recently the subject of an international design competition. The winning proposal - to fill the area with small-scale buildings and a pedestrian boulevard, but leave the palace essentially untouched - has angered many Varsovians, a good few of whom support the idea of demolishing the whole thing. The debate still rages, and parts of the area still resemble a huge building site, but the landscaped entrance to the new Centrum metro station has pacified some critics. The cavernous interior contains offices, cinemas, swimming pools, some good foreign-language bookshops, and, the ultimate capitalistic revenge, a casino. It's also the site of one of Warsaw's most important congress venues and concert venues, the Zala Kongresowa , which provides a home for visiting pop stars as well as the city's two major jazz festivals . One truly epoch-defining gig to take place here was the appearance of the Rolling Stones in 1967 (a time when Western groups hardly ever made the trip to Eastern Europe), an event which kick-started the Polish beat boom of the sixties. South and west of the palace lie the areas of Warsaw that have experienced the most intense development in the years following the introduction of the free market. High-rise office blocks seem to be shooting up everywhere along the main westbound highway Aleja Jerozolimskie , and in the streets surrounding Warszawa Centralna train station. The gleaming chrome and glass of the LOT building on al. Jerozolimskie has long been the major landmark here, although its supremacy has recently been challenged by the Warsaw Tower (known as the Daewoo Tower when the Korean conglomerate first built it in 1997) a little further west along ul. Sienna - second only to the Palac Kultury i Nauk in height, it's a haughtily elegant structure whose combination of smooth curves and angular straight lines ensures that it has a different profile from whichever direction you look at it. South of the Palac Kultury i Nauk, the busy tramlined strip of ul. Marszaleowska leads south towards plac Konstitucji , crowded on either side by department stores, glitzy shops and the cultural institutes of other erstwhile communist countries. Cross-streets such as Hoza and Wilcza comprise a residental area whose discreetly well-heeled inhabitants are served by increasing numbers of chic little stores and snazzy cafe-bars.
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