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Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at 1.86 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.27 million residents, which makes Warsaw the 7th most-populous city in the European ...
- Overview
- City site
- Climate
- City layout
- People
- Manufacturing and services
- Transportation
Warsaw, city, capital of Poland. Located in the east-central part of the country, Warsaw is also the capital of Mazowieckie województwo (province).
Warsaw is notable among Europe’s capital cities not for its size, its age, or its beauty but for its indestructibility. It is a phoenix that has risen repeatedly from the ashes of war. Having suffered fearful damage during the Swedish and Prussian occupation of 1655–56, it was again assaulted in 1794, when the Russian army massacred the population of the right-bank suburb of Praga. In 1944, after the Warsaw Uprising failed, by Adolf Hitler’s order the city was razed; the left-bank suburbs, controlled by the Germans, were emptied of their remaining population; and the buildings were systematically reduced to rubble by fire and dynamite. In 1945, however, the people of Warsaw, the Varsovians, returned, and the city resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country’s centre of social, political, economic, scientific, and cultural life. Many of the historical streets, buildings, and churches have been restored exactly according to their original forms.
Warsaw lies on the Vistula (Wisła) River, about 240 miles (386 km) southeast of the Baltic coast city of Gdańsk. It is situated in the middle of the Warsaw Plain, a glacier-formed basin that ranges from 250 to 380 feet (76 to 116 metres) above sea level. Divided into right- and left-bank portions by the river, the city extends about 18 miles from north to south and 16 miles from east to west. The river is some 3,900 feet (1,190 metres) wide at this point, although the riverbed has been artificially narrowed by embankment to a third of this width.
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The climate is moderate and rather cool, the prevailing westerly winds bringing frequent changes of weather. The average yearly temperature is in the mid-40s F (about 8 °C), with a July average in the mid-60s F (about 19 °C) and a January average in the mid-20s F (about −3 °C). Yearly rainfall averages 21 inches (541 mm), most of which falls in the...
The size of Warsaw reflects the historical fortunes of the city. From about 0.5 square mile (1.25 square km) in the 17th century, it expanded to 50 square miles (130 square km) by 1937 and, in the postwar period, to 172 square miles (445 square km) by 1957. Growth has continued since. The subdivision into seven districts—Śródmieście (the city’s centre), Żoliborz, Wola, Ochota, Mokotów, Praga-Południe (Praga South), and Praga-Północ (Praga North)—reflects centuries-old local names, but Warsaw is now virtually a new creation, with a layout that only partly resembles the historical city. The changes reflect a conscious planning of social and economic functions. Industries and warehouses are located on the outskirts or between modern housing developments; park areas have tripled in size; and streets, though still largely based on the old network, have been widened. The Old and New towns, Nowy Świat Avenue, and the city churches and palaces, on the other hand, have all been carefully reconstructed.
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Warsaw possesses a wide variety of architectural monuments, whether as replicas or originals. In the Old Town, which was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1980, the Gothic St. John’s Cathedral and the red-brick fortifications known as the Barbican remain from the medieval period. The houses of the Old Town Market Square have been rebuilt in the splendour of their 15th-century style. There are many Baroque churches of the Counter-Reformation period, including the Jesuit Church next to the cathedral and the Church of the Holy Cross, which contains the heart of the Polish French composer Frédéric Chopin. The magnificently reconstructed Royal Castle, decorated in late 18th-century style, is on Zamkowy Square. Other royal and aristocratic palaces are at Łazienkowski Park and at John III Sobieski’s Wilanów. South of Łazienkowski Park is Belweder (Belvedere) Palace, a former presidential residence used now for ceremonial occasions. Remnants of the tsarist era are evident in the Church of St. Alexander in the middle of Trzech Krzyży Square and in the vast Alexander Citadel on the riverside, north of the New Town. The grandest of tsarist monuments, the colossal Orthodox Cathedral (1911), was demolished by the Polish government in the 1920s, but its symbolic role in the city has been assumed by the massive Palace of Culture and Science (1949), built by the Soviets south of the Old Town. The city’s modern architecture is generally regarded as undistinguished. Although the prewar garden suburbs of Żoliborz and Saska Kępa have survived, the vast sprawl of contemporary suburbia is made up in large part of seemingly endless expanses of uniform, prefabricated concrete apartment blocks.
The multinational population of Warsaw was transformed as a result of World War II, and today the city is composed almost entirely of Poles. For centuries, though, Warsaw was a place where the Polish-speaking Roman Catholic majority lived alongside Jews, Germans, and Russians. Early in the 20th century the largely Yiddish-speaking Jewish community ...
After 1948, when Poland’s communist government was established, the largest segment of the city’s labour force was employed by state-owned and cooperatively owned sectors of the national economy; manufacturing accounted for about one-third of the workers in the 1980s. Shortages of some consumer goods and food items were a problem, symbolized by the...
Warsaw is the hub of main rail, road, and air routes that are of importance to eastern Europe. Expressways have been built through the city along both banks of the Vistula River and in the form of a ring road through the inner suburbs. Motor traffic still shares the capital’s main streets with a surface tramway system. The city also began construct...
Warsaw (In Polish: Warszawa) is the capital of Poland in Masovian Voivodeship. It is also the biggest city in that country. There are about 2,000,000 people living there (1,726,581 as of 31 March 2014). People from Warsaw are called "Varsovians". There are other names for Warsaw.
Varsovia ( en polaco: Warszawa; AFI: [varˈʂava] ⓘ) es la capital y ciudad más grande de Polonia desde 1596. Es también la sede del presidente de la República, del Parlamento y del resto de las autoridades centrales.
Warsaw - Capital, Poland, WWII: The origins of Warsaw remain obscure. Excavations within present urban limits have confirmed the existence of Stare Bródno, a small trading settlement of the 10th and early 11th centuries ce. Its functions were taken over successively by Kamion (c. 1065) and Jazdow (first recorded in 1262).
