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Warsaw was a small fishing village in the 13th century. In time, it became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia. Upon the extinction of the ducal line, the duchy was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1526. In 1572, Warsaw gave its name to the Warsaw Confederacy, an agreement by the Polish gentry to tolerate different religious faiths in the Kingdom of Poland. Due to its central location between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's capitals of Vilna and Cracow, Warsaw became the capital of Poland in 1596. Warsaw remained the capital of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, to become the capital of the Province New East Prussia. Liberated by Napoleon's army in 1807, it was made the capital of the newly created Duchy of Warsaw. |
Following the decisions of the Congress of Vienna of 1815, Warsaw became the center of the Polish Kingdom, a constitutional monarchy under a personal union with Imperial Russia.Many people still have an image of Warsaw as a dull concrete jungle, a wasteland of Soviet-era housing with little appeal. The city does undoubtedly have its fair share of problems and whole swathes of its suburbs are indeed dominated by the less-than-imaginative creations of communist-era architects. But there is far more to one of Europe's most underrated cities, with a string of things to see, an impressive cultural scene and an increasingly lively nightlife. Warsaw is a real survivor - the city's current day existence is impressive in itself.By the end of World War II, roughly 85% of the city lay in ruins and most of the population had been killed, deported or sent to concentration camps. More than a third of Warsaw's pre-war population was Jewish, although there are hardly any traces of this heritage remaining, as the city's prosperous Jewish community was decimated by the end of the war. Much of Warsaw's historic centre was painstakingly recreated in the years after World War II, in a move by the communist authorities, which surprised the citizens of the city as it much as it did the West. Somewhat ironically, many of today's Old Town buildings are closer to the original architecture than they were before destruction, as the alterations of the intervening centuries were not incorporated in the reconstruction. The strikingly successful rebuilding of the Old Town was finally rewarded in 1980, when the entire complex earned its place on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Situated in the Mazowieckie province, in east-central Poland, the city spans the Wisla (Vistula River) and all the main tourist sites are on the left bank, while the right bank contains the increasingly fashionable Praga district. The tourist epicentre of Warsaw is the 'Royal Route', which runs north-south from the New and Old Towns, past the fashionable shops of Nowy Swiat, the palaces that survived the war and the royal gardens of Lazienki Park, before reaching Wilanow Palace to the south of the city centre. The city also boasts many green spaces, with leafy parks where rowing boats cruise past outdoor cafés, during the summer, and free classical concerts attract crowds in a scene far removed from the dull Communist-era images of Warsaw. The nightlife scene today is equally surprising, with the city's clued-up and increasingly well dressed youth flocking to the countless bars and clubs of a city that now buzzes after dark. |
