A City Rebuilt from Ruins: Warsaw Then and Now

Today marks 81 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe. For Warsaw, this date has a special significance, as no other major European capital was destroyed to such an extent. On 8 May 1945, all that remained of the beautiful city, which had a population of around 1.3 million before the outbreak of the conflict, were burnt-out walls, buried streets and almost completely destroyed buildings. Only a handful of people survived amidst the ruins – the rest lay beneath the rubble or had been deported. Today’s Warsaw was largely rebuilt from scratch, and traces of this tragedy can be seen by comparing old photographs with contemporary views of the same places. The city literally rose from the ruins.

Warsaw – a city from the ruins

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Warsaw was one of the largest and fastest-growing cities of the Second Polish Republic. A multicultural community thrived here, with theatres, cinemas, universities and industrial plants in operation, and a dense network of trams linking the rapidly expanding districts. The city’s main thoroughfares were Krakowskie Przedmieście, Marszałkowska Street, Nowy Świat and Aleje Jerozolimskie. Almost one in three residents of the capital was Jewish, making Warsaw the largest concentration of Jewish people in Europe. Disaster struck the Vistula as early as September 1939. The 25th of September proved particularly dramatic, later dubbed ‘Black Monday’. On that day, the German air force carried out a massive bombing raid on the capital, whilst artillery shelled the densely built-up districts of Śródmieście and the Old Town. The Royal Castle was already severely damaged by then. Its burnt-out tower quickly became a symbol of Warsaw under attack and in ruins.

The Warsaw Ghetto and the erasure of memory

In 1940, the German occupiers established the Warsaw Ghetto. Around 450,000 Jews were rounded up and confined to a small area. Starvation, epidemics, executions and deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp led to the deaths of a vast proportion of this community. In the face of mounting terror, an uprising broke out in the ghetto in the spring of 1943, led by Mordechaj Anielewicz, among others. After it was suppressed, SS units methodically set fire to successive quarters of the district, turning it into a vast sea of ruins. Jürgen Stroop, who commanded the operation, later reported cynically: “The Jewish residential district in Warsaw no longer exists.” However, Warsaw lost far more than just buildings during the war. The Germans carried out a deliberate campaign to destroy Polish cultural heritage. The priceless collections of the Krasiński Family Library, the city archives, museum collections and thousands of works of art were burnt. After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans deliberately set fire to the library warehouses on Okólnik Street. Manuscripts by Juliusz Słowacki, Fryderyk Chopin and Joachim Lelewel were lost in the flames. Historians still regard these losses as irreparable.

St Augustine’s Church amidst the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. Photo: Public domain)

63 days of fighting and a city doomed to death

On 1 August 1944, another uprising broke out in the capital, known today as the Warsaw Uprising. The order to commence fighting was given by Home Army Commander Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski. The German forces suppressing the Poles were commanded by Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. The fighting lasted 63 days and claimed the lives of around 16,000 insurgents and as many as 180,000 civilians. The massacres in Wola, where the units of Oskar Dirlewanger and Bronisław Kamiński murdered residents street by street, went down in history as particularly brutal. Following the capitulation of the uprising, the occupying forces began the systematic destruction of the city. Special sapper units blew up palaces, churches, libraries and tenement houses. Among the buildings reduced to ruins were the Saxon Palace, Brühl’s Palace, the Grand Theatre, St John’s Cathedral, the Main Railway Station, the Palace on the Isle, and almost all the buildings in the Old Town. Bridges across the Vistula, water supply networks and technical infrastructure were destroyed. The post-war toll proved devastating: around 84–85% of the buildings on the left bank of Warsaw ceased to exist.

The city rises from the ruins

When Red Army and Polish Army units entered Warsaw in January 1945, only a few thousand people were hiding amongst the ruins. Photographs from those months resemble scenes from a lunar desert. Seas of rubble stretched for kilometres, and many streets were barely recognisable. Despite this, as early as February 1945, the Capital Reconstruction Office, or the famous BOS, was established. Its members included architects, urban planners and art historians, amongst them the invaluable Jan Zachwatowicz and Józef Sigalin. Before work could begin, millions of tonnes of rubble had to be cleared away. Bricks were recovered by hand, cleaned and reused in the reconstruction of tenement houses, palaces and churches. The reconstruction of Warsaw quickly became an unprecedented undertaking in post-war Europe.

Miasto z ruin — Burning tenement houses on Marszałkowska Street. Photo: Public domain

The city centre reconstructed from Canaletto’s paintings

The historic centre of Warsaw was so badly damaged that it had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Architects drew on pre-war plans, archival photographs and paintings by Bernardo Bellotto, known as Canaletto. The reconstruction of the Old Town took place mainly between 1949 and 1955. The outstanding result of this work attracted international interest and acclaim, and in 1980 Warsaw’s Old Town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as an exceptional example of a comprehensive reconstruction of a historic urban complex. As part of the extensive works, the Royal Route, the Old Town Square, hundreds of tenement houses, dozens of palaces and many churches were rebuilt. The history of the Royal Castle looked quite different against this backdrop. For many years it remained in ruins, as the communist authorities were unwilling to fund its reconstruction. The turning point came only in the 1970s, under pressure from the public and nationwide fundraising campaigns. The reconstruction of what is now a symbol of Warsaw and its resilience lasted from 1971 to 1984.

New Warsaw on the ruins of the old

Post-war reconstruction also opened up many opportunities for the realisation of architects’ and urban planners’ grand designs. In the 1950s, the W-Z route was laid out, the MDM was built, and the Palace of Culture and Science was erected as a ‘gift’ from the Soviet Union. Many streets were widened, often at the expense of demolishing surviving buildings, causing a significant part of the old neighbourhoods to disappear forever. The buildings of Śródmieście and Wola suffered particularly heavy losses. It was there that the most ambitious visions of post-war planners were realised.

Brzozowa Street in the Old Town, post-war years. Photo: NAC

Today’s Warsaw is a mosaic city. Pre-war tenement houses stand alongside socialist realist buildings and modern skyscrapers. Discussions continue to revolve around ideas for the reconstruction of further lost buildings, most recently the Saxon and Brühl Palaces. The idea of restoring the destroyed capital has as many supporters as it does opponents. It is not an easy subject, just as the history of Warsaw is not an easy one – a city that survived its own death. Its landscape bears witness to the catastrophe of war, a colossal reconstruction effort and dynamic development in recent years as one of Europe’s fastest-changing metropolises.

Source: cbw.wp.mil.pl, 1944.pl

Old Town Square, Dekert’s side. 1944 and 2020. Photo: Ewa Faryaszewska/Museum of Warsaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

The city centre and part of Wola in 1918 and today. Source: State Archives in Warsaw and Google Earth

View of the Old Town, 1945 and 2019. Photo: Warsaw – on the destruction and reconstruction of the city, Warsaw: “Interpress” Publishers, pp. 283 and Google Earth

Piwna Street in the Old Town, 1947 and 2020. Photo: Henry N. Cobb and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

The cross-city bridge in 1932 and 2022. Source: National Digital Archives and Google Maps

Mansjonaria in 1945 and 2023. Source: Warsaw 1945 by Emilia Borecka & Leonard Sempoliński, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1975, and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski.

The Mostowa Gate in 1945 and today. Source: Warsaw 1945 by Emilia Borecka & Leonard Sempoliński, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1975, and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

Krasiński Square in ruins in the post-war years and today. Source: Polona and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

Warsaw Insurgents’ Square before the war and in 2022. Source: Polona and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

Szpitalna Street before the war and in 2022. Source: Polona and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – the 1920s and 2022. Source: State Archives in Warsaw and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

The area around the Saxon Palace in 1935 and 2021. Source: mapa.um.warszawa.pl

The footbridge between the ghettos, the junction of Chłodna and Żelazna streets in the early 1940s and today. Source: State Archives in Warsaw and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

Bank Polski, pre-war years and a contemporary remnant. Source: State Archives in Warsaw and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

The Jabłonowski Palace in 1945 and 2022. Source: NAC and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski

A section of the ruins of the Old Town Market Square, with Fukier’s wine bar visible. 1945 and 2013. Source: Warsaw 1945 by Emilia Borecka & Leonard Sempoliński, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1975, and Scotch Mist, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons