Warsaw old town

Historic center of Warsaw
UNESCO world heritage
	View of Warsaw's old town with the castle (right), St. John's Cathedral and Sigmund's Column (left)
National territory:	Poland
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	(ii) (vi)
Surface:	25.93 hectares
Buffer zone:	666.78 hectares
Reference No .:	30bis
UNESCO region :	Europe and North America
	History of enrollment
Enrollment:	1980 ( session 4 )
Extension:	2014

The Warsaw Old Town is the historic center of the Polish capital Warsaw . After its complete destruction in the Second World War in 1944, it was rebuilt largely true to the original between 1949 and 1955 and entered on the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage on September 2, 1980 .

history

View of Warsaw from Praga (around 1790 according to Canaletto)

Warsaw's old town was founded not far from the bank of the Vistula , above a steep embankment, next to the castle of the Mazovian princes , in the 13th century. The city was initially surrounded by an earth wall, at the end of the 14th century a brick wall was built. The city consisted of a square market square and a network of streets at right angles. There were three churches within the city wall: St. John's Cathedral , later the St. Martin's Church and the Jesuit Church were built . A town hall was built in the middle of the market square . Warsaw was declared a princely seat in 1413. The city wall was doubled and a moat was dug. There were two city gates: the Krakow Gate from the south and the New Town Gate with a roundabout from the west. At the Kraków Gate, close to the embankment, the prince's seat was in the rectangular, Gothic building.

In 1611 the Polish King Sigismund III. Wasa Warsaw to the capital of Poland. The city developed rapidly outside the city walls, particularly in a southerly direction along the Vistula. Magnificent palaces and town houses were built, but the old town remained almost unchanged. The old princely residence became a pentagonal royal palace . From 1643 to 1644 the monument of Sigismund III was erected on the Palace Square next to the Kraków Gate . Wasa built in the shape of a column. At the end of the 18th century, the castle received a neat east facade in the style of the Saxon Baroque. The other facades were sparsely decorated. In 1815, after the Third Partition of Poland , Warsaw came under Russian rule as the capital of Congress Poland , which was linked to the Tsarist empire through a personal union . After the failed uprising in 1831 and the abolition of autonomy, it became a Russian provincial city. The old town degenerated into a poor district. The town hall was demolished and the city walls were built with tenements and partially demolished.

In 1918 Warsaw again became the capital of an independent Polish state. The old town was renewed as a tourist destination, the town houses on the market square were decorated by well-known painters in 1928. The city walls were partially freed from the tenements and renovated. The Royal Castle became the residence of the Polish President in 1926.

destruction

In September 1939, the royal palace was hit by aerial bombs and partially burned out. The art historians endangered their lives and tried to save architectural details and furnishing elements of the castle for future reconstruction.

During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the old town was fought over. Many houses collapsed in the hail of bombs. After the defeat of the Polish Home Army , the entire surviving population was expelled, and in the deserted city, SS units destroyed the remaining buildings with flamethrowers and explosives. The royal palace , which burned out in 1939 , was also completely destroyed in 1944.

Warsaw Uprising in 1944
German flamethrower squad in Warsaw
Destroyed old town in 1945
Polski Bank 2004

reconstruction

The rebuilt old town around 1960

Warsaw Market Square

The Warsaw Barbican , behind it the New Town (Nowe Miasto)

The Warsaw residents who returned after January 18, 1945 found almost all uninhabitable ruins. Of the 957 pre-war buildings classified as historical, 782 were completely destroyed and 141 partially destroyed. The massive ground floor walls still stood in the old town, but the upper floors had collapsed many times. But soon the reconstruction began . Initially, around 100,000 mines had to be defused. The easiest way would have been to clear the ruins and build new houses in series. But it was decided to restore the old town and the royal palace almost true to the original. They should be a sign of triumph over the occupiers. The reconstruction was under the direction of Jan Zachwatowicz .

The office for the reconstruction of the capital was established on February 14, 1945 . During the reconstruction, survey drawings from the pre-war period that had been saved in the archives of the architecture faculty of the Polytechnic could be used. For the facade reconstructions, detailed city views from the 18th century by Bernardo Bellotto , known as Canaletto, were used. From 1945 to 1947 the ruins of the town houses around the market square were cleared of rubble. Archaeological excavations were carried out at the same time. Fragments of Gothic brick walls and even entire pointed arches appeared beneath the crumbling plaster . In 1949 the rebuilt houses on the north side of the market square were given to the Historical Museum of Warsaw (now the Museum of Warsaw ) and the fallen Sigismund Column was rebuilt. The construction of the new east-west street , which runs on the edge of the old town, began in 1948. It was carried out collision-free and noise-free in the tunnel next to Schlossplatz .

Warsaw's Old Town was officially opened on July 22, 1953. The houses largely retained their original appearance, but inside small apartments were furnished according to the standard of the time. Some apartments were made available to famous artists. Some areas, such as Ulica Nowy Świat ( New World Street ), which was often four to five storeys high before the war , were reduced to a two-storey building height and thus acquired a small-town character. From today's perspective, buildings of historicism and art nouveau that are valuable were in part consciously sacrificed.

The reconstruction of the old town was not finally finished until 1955. The reconstruction of the royal castle was postponed indefinitely due to lack of money. The rubble was disposed of, the foundations were spilled with earth and covered with turf. When the new party secretary Edward Gierek came to power, he proposed in 1971 that the reconstruction be financed from donations, which earned him general but short-term sympathy. The reconstruction took about 17 years. The details saved in 1939 have been reused. Today works of art from the old collections are exhibited in the royal palace. Among them are the vedute of the city by Bernardo Bellotto, which is very important for the reconstruction of Warsaw, as well as newly donated art objects. The Kubicki arcades at the foot of the castle form the reception hall for visitors and are connected to the ground floor by an escalator.

World heritage

Reference to world cultural heritage in the old town

In 1980, the following criteria were decisive for entry on the World Heritage List:

Criterion (ii): The initiation of comprehensive conservation activities on the scale of the entire historic city was a unique European experience and contributed to the verification of conservation doctrines and practices.

(The introduction of a coherent reconstruction on the scale of an entire historic old town was a unique European experiment and helped to review the rules and practice of reconstruction and monument preservation.)

Criterion (vi): The Historic Center of Warsaw is an exceptional example of the comprehensive reconstruction of a city that had been deliberately and totally destroyed. The foundation of the material reconstruction was the inner strength and determination of the nation, which brought about the reconstruction of the heritage on a unique scale in the history of the world.

(The Old Town of Warsaw - the historic center - is an exceptional example of a comprehensive reconstruction of an old town that had been deliberately and completely destroyed. The basis of the material restoration was the inner strength and determination of the Polish nation who managed to preserve the historical legacy restore in a unique way in world history.)