The Old Town of Warsaw has preserved the appearance of a Baroque and Renaissance town of the 17th and 18th centuries, although it was completely destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In the period from 1949 to 1963, Polish architects painstakingly restored their capital. For the accuracy of the historical restoration, in 1980, the Old Town of Warsaw was included in the UNESCO Cultural Heritage List.
The territory of the Old Town is small, since Warsaw became the capital only in 1596. Before that, the capital of Poland was the city of Krakow. The kings lived in the Wawel Castle of Krakow since 1038. In 1595, a strong fire occurred in the castle and King Sigismund III decided not to restore Wawel, but moved the capital from Krakow to Warsaw.
Until 1596, Warsaw was the center of a small Masovian principality. The fortified town behind the fortress walls occupied a small territory. The distance from the southern Krakow Gate, where the Castle Square was located, to the northern Florian Gate, where the Warsaw Barbican was located, is only 500 meters. On the east side, the Old Town bordered the Wisla River.
There is a Market Square in the center of Warsaw`s Old Town. It has always been the commercial and political center of the city. It remains so today. Cafes, restaurants and small shops are located in the houses surrounding the square. There are always a lot of artists on the square, who give it a special charm. Here you can also take a horse-drawn carriage to ride a cart through the streets of Warsaw`s Old Town.
When you walk along these streets, it is impossible to believe that more than 85% of the houses of the Old Town of Warsaw after the suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising by German troops were mountains of rubble. Polish architects tried to use all the fragments of houses that they found in these places during the restoration.
