Valentine's Day Classic: Chopin’s Heart

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For Valentine's Day, the Atlas team would like to bring you this tale of the heart….literally. The Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, Poland is the final resting place of famed composer Frédéric Chopin’s heart - smuggled there by Chopin’s sister after his death. READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/chopin-s-heart

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello my loves, it is Valentine's Day.
0:07.4	A day that is an equal mix of love, of romance, and also just absolutely hatred.
0:16.8	It might be the most hated holiday in the world.
0:20.2	It is literally banned in a number of countries.
0:23.2	Today that even here in the U.S. brings some complicated mix of joy and sorrow and annoyance
0:30.9	Well, in honor of those complicated feelings, we are bringing you a story of the heart, quite literally.
0:37.9	It is also a love story in its own way.
0:41.9	So on this Valentine's Day, I give you Chopin's heart by our brilliant producer Amanda McGowan.
0:48.9	Take it away Amanda.
0:51.9	In the dead of night in a silent empty church in Warsaw, there is a group of people
1:01.9	huddled around a stone pillar.
1:03.9	There is an archbishop, a government official, two forensic scientists, and an academic.
1:10.9	And just about around midnight, they get to work.
1:14.9	They are here on a controversial and pretty secret mission.
1:19.9	And they are gathered around that pillar because they are going to be digging out from inside of it,
1:23.9	a priceless and very closely guarded treasure.
1:27.9	So they open the pillar up.
1:29.9	Carefully.
1:31.9	Carefully.
1:33.9	And there inside a mahogany urn is a heart.
1:40.9	A heart in a beautiful crystal jar.
1:45.9	This was the heart of a legendary composer, and a Polish national hero, Frederick Chopin.
	...

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