What’s so special about Warsaw?

Warsaw is the rare European capital that rebuilt itself almost from zero. By January 1945, roughly 85 percent of the city lay in ruins — deliberately demolished after the Warsaw Uprising — and the reconstruction of the Old Town was so faithful that UNESCO listed it in 1980 for the act of rebuilding itself. That history is legible on every street: nineteenth-century tenements stand beside socialist-era blocks, with glass towers rising behind both. The mix looks chaotic at first. It’s also the most honest record of the twentieth century that any European capital can show.

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