{"id":140015,"date":"2026-08-04T05:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T05:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/140015\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T05:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T05:24:12","slug":"taking-the-war-out-of-warsaw-polish-capital-has-lessons-for-post-war-cities-and-devastated-communities-in-ukraine-and-gaza-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/140015\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking the war out of Warsaw: Polish capital has lessons for post-war cities and devastated communities in Ukraine and Gaza too"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Add to those two current tragedies of death anddisplaced peoples recent atrocities at the likes of Sudan and Syria, where Aleppo and Homs still await renewal after\u00a0systematic bombings, and the whole nature of urban reconstruction and\u00a0restitution opens up vitally important debates for citizens, architects, urban planners, politicians, humanitarian bodies, and funding institutes.<\/p>\n

\"UkrainianUkrainian children sit in a refugee center in Nadarzyn, near Warsaw in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. . (AP Photo\/Petr David Josek)<\/p>\n

Truly, the world \u2018is in a state of chassis\u2019, and, man\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Paris'sParis’s Notre Dame Cathedral too followed closely to ‘before’ state, only all new inside five year after a fire<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Reinstating what had been before as faithfully as possible is the route that Warsaw took after massive destruction by German army forces after theWarsaw Uprising in 1944: the retaliation saw 85% of the historic capitaldestroyed.<\/p>\n

\"21st21st century Warsaw has built on the mid 1990s rebuild, with a skyline increasingly full of towers. Image: Polish Tourism Organisation<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The rebuilding wasaddressed on a recentweekend 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 exactreinstatement was a form of \u2018Disneyfication\u2019. or on a deeper level, culturally appropriate and vital to a people\u2019s self-worth.<\/p>\n

\"OldOld Town good as new…because it’s newish, just about 60 years old. Picture: Polish Tourism\u00a0 \u00a0Organisation<\/p>\n

Over a weekend visit, the skilled rebuild ofWarsaw as-was thankfully felt 100% far from a Disney approach, whether it was the Royal Palace, the Market Square, old burghers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\"AcresAcres of green rooftop gardens at the University of Warsaw Library. Image: BUW<\/p>\n

Some 60 and 70 years on, it\u2019s clear the drive
restored pride and
purpose to the Polish capital, and where other parts of this noble city evolved differently.<\/p>\n

Tellingly, though,
Warsaw\u2019s Old Town
rebirth was so notable that Unesco designated it a World Heritage Site \u2014 not because it survived, but because it demonstrated an extraordinary reconstruction of cultural identity.<\/p>\n

Years on, it has also fed into the current and
ongoing boom in that capital\u2019s economy and construction since the early 2000s \u2014 round about the time many skilled Polish tradespeople left post-crash Ireland to further Warsaw\u2019s
expansion, outwards and, particularly, upwards.<\/p>\n

Today,\u00a0 Warsaw is\u00a0reckoned to be one of Europe\u2019s fastest-growing skyscraper cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Its\u00a0decades\u2019 long title holder of iconic image, the Socialist Classical-designed\u00a0 Palace of Culture and Science, \u2018gifted\u2019 to the city by Joseph Stalin (thinkEmpire 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\u2019s 237m highPalace of Science and\u00a0 Culture.<\/p>\n

\"PalacePalace of Science and Culture, Warsaw, 1955, with new 21st century skyline rising behind. Pic: \u00a9 City of Warsaw<\/p>\n

That \u2018palace\u2019 was second in height in 1955 across all of of Europe, after Moscow University.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s Verso tower remains the EU\u2019s tallest tower, whilst Warsaw\u2019s skyline today numbers at least 40 towers over 100m high(Cork\u2019s Elysian is 87m tall); six more over 100m are in construction and another dozen or so have plans approved, yet to start.<\/p>\n

Warsaw\u2019s rebuild moves and fortunes from the 1940s contrast with that of, say, Dresden, where adifferent rebuild philosophy was applied afterAllied bombing and a firestorm in 1945 devastated the historic centre, to a lesser extent than Phoenix-like Warsaw, whererebuilding showed a refusal to allow its cultural identity be obliterated.<\/p>\n

\"ViewView 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 \u20ac130 million. (Photo: Walter Hahn\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

That Unesco-recognised Warsaw\u2019s Old City led to one of the most ambitious historical reconstruction projects ever undertaken prompted this writer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Each will be different according to circumstances, war outcomes, how peace is won, on housing needs, cultural strengths, and future goals.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019ll 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…<\/p>\n

Warsaw, at least, gives long-term hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AS WAR and natural disasters ravage so many parts of the world, a visit to the Polish capital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[95],"tags":[14620,67241,48195,182,181],"class_list":["post-140015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-warsaw","tag-building","tag-construction-munster","tag-planning-permission","tag-poland","tag-warsaw"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117035576030563894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}