The Pianist: Warsaw in Ruins

In late 1940 the Szpilmans leave their home and move into the overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto. In the film Władysław gets a job playing in a café frequented by upper-class Jews; the real Szpilman played in a café on Sienna Street. The wall around the ghetto was 3 m high and topped with barbed wire. Some of its best-preserved fragments stand at 55 Sienna Street, which is where the pin sits.

Location precision: The ghetto covered a large district; the pin marks the preserved wall fragment at 55 Sienna Street.

Visitor guidance: Wall fragments can be seen at 55 Sienna Street.

Principal photography began on 9 February 2001 at Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam. The Warsaw Ghetto and the surrounding city were recreated on the studio backlot as they would have looked during the war. The first scene shot at the studio was the technically demanding one in which Szpilman watches the ghetto uprising unfold. The ghetto you see on screen is therefore a set in Germany, not a street in Warsaw.

In August 1942 the Szpilmans are herded onto a train they are told is bound for labour camps; it is headed to Treblinka. A member of the Jewish Ghetto Police who knows Szpilman separates him from his family at the railhead. The real Szpilman was pulled from the line the same way. A stone monument shaped like an open freight car was unveiled here in 1988, with 400 Jewish-Polish first names engraved on it. The film scene itself was shot at the National Defence University of Warsaw.

Visitor guidance: The memorial stands on the site of the former Umschlagplatz on Stawki Street; it is a solemn place, so visit quietly.

When filming moved to Warsaw on 29 March 2001, the crew chose the rundown district of Praga because of its abundance of original buildings. The art department built onto them, re-creating World War II-era Poland with signs and posters from the period. Praga North survived the devastation of the war, and today it is one of few districts where you can experience the atmosphere of pre-war Warsaw.

Location precision: The sources name the Praga district but no individual street or building used in the film.

Visitor guidance: Praga North streets give a sense of pre-war Warsaw.

In August 1944 the real Szpilman was hiding in an abandoned building at Aleja Niepodległości 223. In November the German officer Hosenfeld found him and asked him to play the piano. In the film, Szpilman plays Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor on the house's grand piano, and Hosenfeld lets him keep hiding and brings him food. The film's house was a villa in Potsdam, not this building.

Location precision: The memoir's hiding place is given only as an address; the pin was found by address search and the film used a villa in Potsdam instead.

Szpilman hides in the now abandoned hospital as Warsaw is destroyed in the fighting. Later, German troops set fire to the hospital with flamethrowers during the razing of the city, and he flees through the ruins, where Hosenfeld discovers him. Those scenes were filmed from 2 March 2001 in an abandoned Soviet military hospital in Beelitz, Germany. The complex has about 60 buildings and remained a Soviet military hospital until 1994.