Built around the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw's commercial and economic hub is a somewhat unsettling mix of skyscrapers and futurist structures lining wide Stalinist-style avenues. Added to this mix are an assortment of luxury boutiques and hotels, blocks of flats from the Communist era and a hotchpotch of small shops and stalls that have popped up, sometimes merely on the pavement, reflecting the rather abrupt and all encompassing economic change.