Paris. Madrid. Vienna. All obvious choices for a cultural weekend away. Warsaw? Not so much. And yet, in a Cost of Culture survey of European cities conducted late last year by the Post Office, Poland’s first city came top , or bottom, depending on which way you look at it. Based on the price of ballet, opera and concert tickets together with entry to a top museum, art gallery and heritage attraction, Warsaw was cheapest by far of 12 cities, coming in at an ovation-inspiring £70 (most expensive was London, at £256 — slow handclaps all round).
So where better to start than at the museum dedicated to Warsaw’s most famous son, the composer Frederick Chopin. Housed in a fine postwar reconstruction of an old