![]() The Germans brought in engineers who specialised in demolition and they went through the streets systematically destroying buildings for months. Of course, lots of cities were damaged or destroyed during World War II but that was because of attacks. In a deliberate and coordinated operation, they went through the Old Town, stealing anything of value, burning buildings with flamethrowers, exploding monuments. To punish the Poles, they decided to destroy Warsaw. The Nazis weren’t happy and they wanted revenge. The resistance inflicted serious damage on the Germans and killed thousands of them. In August of 1944, the Polish resistance took up the fight against the Nazi occupiers in what became known as the Warsaw Uprising. It was five years later that the real blow was to land. But the residents stayed on and buildings were patched up. The Old Town was badly damaged early on, with bombing during the German invasion of Poland in 1939. There were the intricately decorated facades of the Guild Hall and the Town Hall the colossal Castle Square and the splashes of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture spread out between them.īut Warsaw was caught right in the middle of WWII’s destructive path. To understand the story of Warsaw’s Old Town, we need to go back to the Second World War.īefore hostilities broke out, the Old Town was a marvellous collection of buildings that told the story of the city’s history. Looking at the historic centre of the Polish capital city today, it’s actually hard to believe that this vast area with thousands of beautiful buildings is decades, rather than centuries, old.īut everything you see here has been meticulously restored to look exactly how it did before evil struck. Like a lesson in humanity, it was the stronger and purer emotion that came to define the legacy of Warsaw’s Old Town. It was spite that destroyed it and pride that restored it.
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