Taking the war out of Warsaw: Polish capital has lessons for post-war cities and devastated communities in Ukraine and Gaza too

Warsaw's Old Town was faithfully created as a matter of cultural pride: who'll pay for other ravaged cities to rise again?

Warsaw's old(ish) Old Town with a rising new metropolis in the background, compete with  skyscraper-filled skyline. Image: Polish Tourism Organisation

AS WAR and natural disasters ravage so many parts of the world, a visit to the Polish capital of Warsaw gives some hope for the future rebuilding, restoration of beauty and of living cities once more following wars.

Phoenix-like Polish capital Warsaw's old town (left) and palace (right) were  entirely rebuilt in the 1950s and '60s. Hard to tell they're not the 17th and 18th century originals. Image:  Polish Tourism Organisation

With vast tracts of Ukraine destroyed by Russian bombing, and Gaza seemingly systematically and deliberately being obliterated by Israel, those two conflict zones come towards the top of a long and sorry list of settlements and monuments that humanity has done its very best/worst to destroy.

Add to those two current tragedies of death and displaced peoples recent atrocities at the likes of Sudan and Syria, where Aleppo and Homs still await renewal after systematic bombings, and the whole nature of urban reconstruction and restitution opens up vitally important debates for citizens, architects, urban planners, politicians, humanitarian bodies, and funding institutes.

Ukrainian children sit in a refugee center in Nadarzyn, near Warsaw in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. . (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

Truly, the world ‘is in a state of chassis’, and, man’s deliberate inhumanity to man (and women and children too) only comes on top of the indirect damage done by human actions and inactions exacerbating climate change, or natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and rampaging fires, either on a vast scale as in France and Spain this week and last, or more minutely the blaze that gutted Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019.

Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral too followed closely to 'before' state, only all new inside five year after a fire

It took just five years to reconstruct Notre-Dame and its 19th century spire almost exactly as it had been in previous centuries: that fast turnaround came only after a brief debate about conservation, rebuilding, authenticity versus the idea that a reinstatement build should show the difference between new and old, use contemporary materials and design advances, as well as a chance to reassess the cultural or societal importance of a building, city quarter, and entire settlements.

Reinstating what had been before as faithfully as possible is the route that Warsaw took after massive destruction by German army forces after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944: the retaliation saw 85% of the historic capital destroyed.

21st century Warsaw has built on the mid 1990s rebuild, with a skyline increasingly full of towers. Image: Polish Tourism Organisation

The rebuilding post-Second World War, in the 1950s and into the 1960s and under Soviet control, saw a very faithful recreation of the Old Town as it had evolved by the 17th and 18th centuries: it came from working from old surveys, photographs, recovered rubble and some surviving walls, real and folk memories, as well from paintings done by Venetian artist Bernardo Belotto (aka known as Canaletto, as was an uncle) in the 1770s, painstakingly accurate due to his use of a simple device known as the camera obscura.

The rebuilding was addressed on a recent weekend Irish press trip to Warsaw (courtesy of the London office of the Polish National Tourism Office,) by the deeply knowledgeable, vastly experienced and entertaining local guide Kuba Wesolowski when discussion ranged over whether exact reinstatement was a form of ‘Disneyfication’. or on a deeper level, culturally appropriate and vital to a people’s self-worth.

Old Town good as new...because it's newish, just about 60 years old. Picture: Polish Tourism   Organisation

Over a weekend visit, the skilled rebuild of Warsaw as-was thankfully felt 100% far from a Disney approach, whether it was the Royal Palace, the Market Square, old burghers’ townhouses, bustling atmospheric streets (busy with tourists), and defensive walls: it was pretty much an idealised version of Warsaw, where buildings sprung back up to their historical appearances, even if uses of them have changed and moved with the centuries.

Acres of green rooftop gardens at the University of Warsaw Library. Image: BUW

Some 60 and 70 years on, it’s clear the drive restored pride and purpose to the Polish capital, and where other parts of this noble city evolved differently.

Tellingly, though, Warsaw’s Old Town rebirth was so notable that Unesco designated it a World Heritage Site — not because it survived, but because it demonstrated an extraordinary reconstruction of cultural identity.

Years on, it has also fed into the current and ongoing boom in that capital’s economy and construction since the early 2000s — round about the time many skilled Polish tradespeople left post-crash Ireland to further Warsaw’s
expansion, outwards and, particularly, upwards.

Today,  Warsaw is reckoned to be one of Europe’s fastest-growing skyscraper cities. 

Its decades’ long title holder of iconic image, the Socialist Classical-designed  Palace of Culture and Science, ‘gifted’ to the city by Joseph Stalin (think Empire State Building in stature and ambition) is now outshadowed by even higher structures, such as the 310m Verso Tower with two viewing platforms looking down on Stalin’s 237m high Palace of Science and  Culture.

Palace of Science and Culture, Warsaw, 1955, with new 21st century skyline rising behind. Pic: © City of Warsaw

That ‘palace’ was second in height in 1955 across all of of Europe, after Moscow University.

The city’s Verso tower remains the EU’s tallest tower, whilst Warsaw’s skyline today numbers at least 40 towers over 100m high(Cork’s Elysian is 87m tall); six more over 100m are in construction and another dozen or so have plans approved, yet to start.

Warsaw’s rebuild moves and fortunes from the 1940s contrast with that of, say, Dresden, where adifferent rebuild philosophy was applied after Allied bombing and a firestorm in 1945 devastated the historic centre, to a lesser extent than Phoenix-like Warsaw, where rebuilding showed a refusal to allow its cultural identity be obliterated.

View from Dresden's townhall of the destroyed Old Town after Allied bombings in Feb 1945. The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) was restored by 2005 at a cost of €130 million. (Photo: Walter Hahn/AFP/Getty Images)

That Unesco-recognised Warsaw’s Old City led to one of the most ambitious historical reconstruction projects ever undertaken prompted this writer’s thoughts to turn to the next pressing needs of the likes of Gaza, and Ukraine and the devastation still being wreaked in each conflict zone.

Each will be different according to circumstances, war outcomes, how peace is won, on housing needs, cultural strengths, and future goals.

Who’ll pay the necessary hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza and Ukraine? Investment needs will be multiples of what the Marshall Plan, and Soviet funds, saw invested in Europe post-Second World War...

Warsaw, at least, gives long-term hope.