Wypadki, kocie łby i cykliści
Accidents, Cobblestones, and Cyclists

Warsaw’s Fin-de-siècle in the Streets

Summary/Abstract: This article attempts to describe the day-to-day sociocultural context in which Warsaw’s first cyclists moved around that city’s streets in the late 19th and early 20th century. Authoritative records documenting the condition and surface appearance of streets, squares, and pavement, other actors in street traffic, their self-presentation, walking and riding practices, and events such as road accidents in the city centre are here presented in confrontation with the first codified urban traffic rules. This juxtaposition allows us to see the bicycle as another medium of modernization – inscribed into the context of the newly arrived modernity of Polish metropolitan life.

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