From 1526, Masovia and Warsaw were part of the Polish Crown. In 1569, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania united under the ‘Union of Lublin’ to formthe ‘Republic of Both Nations’(Polish: Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów); Warsaw was designated as the venue for future parliamentary sessions. In 1573, the first royal election took place in Warsaw. In 1596, King Sigismund III Vasa (1566–1632, reigned from 1587) moved the capital of Poland from Kraków to Warsaw. In 1648, Praga, on the right bank of the Vistula, was granted town privileges. Between 1655 and 1657, Warsaw was occupied and destroyed by the Swedes. In 1697, Elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony, ‘the Strong’ (1670–1733, reigned as King of Poland 1697–1706 and 1709–1733), was crowned King of Poland as Augustus II. He was succeeded on the Polish throne by another member of the House of Wettin, his son Augustus III (1696–1763, reigned from 1733), who further strengthened the political and cultural ties between Warsaw and Dresden. In 1772, Poland was partitioned for the first time between Russia, Prussia and Austria, with Warsaw placed under Russian protectorate. From 1788 to 1792, the four-year ‘Great Sejm’ sat in Warsaw; in 1791, it adopted the Constitution of 3 May, which was the most modern constitution in Europe at the time. Praga had been part of Warsaw since 1791. Following the Second Partition of Poland, Warsaw was occupied by Russia in 1793. In 1794, Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732–1798, reigned 1764–1795) was elected as the last King of Poland. He turned Warsaw into a centre of the Enlightenment. The city experienced a cultural heyday in art and architecture, the buildings and design influences of which continue to shape the cityscape to this day (such as Łazienki Park with the palace on the island and the palace designed by Antonio Corazzi). At the same time, this was the period of the decline of the Polish state, which disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795 and was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria (the Third Partition of Poland).

Warsaw became the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw, established by Napoleon (1807–1813), and, following the Congress of Vienna, the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, with the Russian Tsar as king (‘Congress Poland’). In 1830, the so-called November Uprising against the partitioning power failed, and a policy of intensive Russification was introduced, and this led to the ‘Great Emigration’ to Western Europe, during which prominent Warsaw figures such as the composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) and the historian Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861) also left the country. Following the equally unsuccessful January Uprising of 1863, Warsaw was reduced to an insignificant provincial capital on the western edge of the Russian Empire. With the second wave of emigration, the Warsaw writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887), amongst others, left the country; it was in Dresden that he wrote his ‘Saxony Novels’ about the era of the Saxon-Polish kings.

In the second half of the 19th century, industry developed and Warsaw was connected to the railway network on the Vienna–St Petersburg line. In the 1880s, increasing numbers of immigrants flocked to Warsaw; housing conditions were poor. The city became the centre of the Polish labour movement: in 1882, Ludwik Waryński (1856–1889) founded the first socialist party (‘Great Proletariat’ – Wielki Proletariat).

During the First World War, at the end of August 1915, German and Austrian troops drove the Russians out of Congress Poland; Central Poland came under German control asthe ‘General Government of Warsaw’, administered by civilian authorities. On 5 November 1916, the Governor-General of Warsaw, Hans von Beseler, proclaimed the so-called Regency Kingdom of Poland. With the Declaration of Independence of 11 November 1918, a reunified Poland regained its state sovereignty. Warsaw became the capital of the Second Polish Republic (Polish: Druga Rzeczpospolita Polska).

From 13 to 25 August 1920, the decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War took place on the right bank of the Vistula, in which the Red Army was successfully repelled (‘Miracle on the Vistula’). On 1 September 1939, German troops invaded Poland, marking the start of the Second World War. However, Warsaw was forced to surrender on 26 September 1939. The Royal Castle was devastated, and art collections, archives and libraries were looted. At the end of October 1939, the Mayor, Stefan Starzyński (1893–1939), was arrested. Executions had been taking place since the start of the war; from December 1939, these occurred in the forests of Palmiry, north-west of Warsaw. In October 1940, the Jewish ghetto was enclosed by a three-metre-high wall; it consisted of two sections connected only by a bridge. By 1942, 300,000 Jews had been deported from here to Treblinka, where they were gassed. In 1942, a ‘German residential area’ was established alongside Łazienki Park. However, the division into three residential areas – one Polish, one German and one Jewish – which had been ordered as early as 1940, was not consistently implemented.

From 1 August to 3 October 1944, the Polish Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa) fought against the German occupiers in the ‘Warsaw Uprising’. Its suppression is regarded as a joint operation by the Germans and the Russians. During those 63 days, all military, political and social underground organisations in Warsaw – which was the capital of the Polish underground state – worked together. The Home Army was under the authority of the government-in-exile in London. Education and culture took place underground, as they were suppressed by the occupying forces.

On 5 August, the ‘Reichsführer SS’ Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) ordered that all inhabitants, regardless of age or gender, be shot and that Warsaw be razed to the ground. A lack of food, water shortages, exhaustion and the overwhelming superiority of the German forces led to the signing of the surrender agreement on 2 October 1944 between the German Wehrmacht and the Polish Home Army, bringing the fighting to an end. Some survivors of the Warsaw Uprising were transported to concentration camps, whilst the city was systematically destroyed. A total of 700,000 Warsaw residents perished during the war, more than half of the city’s pre-war population. The Praga district on the right bank had already been captured by Soviet troops on 14 September 1944. Due to alleged supply difficulties, the Red Army did not cross over to the deserted left bank of Warsaw until 17 January. As early as 3 January, a decision had been taken in Lublin to rebuild Warsaw as the capital. On 20 January, the provisional communist government moved its seat from Lublin to Warsaw.

After 1945, Warsaw became the capital of the People’s Republic of Poland, a satellite state of the Soviet Union. On 26 October 1945, land in Warsaw was nationalised (the ‘Bierut Decree’). The whole of Poland raised funds for the reconstruction of Warsaw, and its Old Town was rebuilt from 1953 onwards. In 1954, Warsaw was closed to new arrivals (a regulation that remained in force until the 1980s) and was regarded as a city of the nomenklatura. The ‘Warsaw Pact’, the military alliance of European communist states led by the Soviet Union and named after the venue of its founding conference, was established in May 1955 (and dissolved on 1 April 1991).

Władysław Gomułka (1905–1982), as First Secretary of the Party, replaced the old Stalinists during the ‘Polish October’ of 1956. The ‘Polish Spring’ came to an end in 1957.

In 1968, Gomułka called on the ‘Zionists’ to leave Poland; almost half of the Jews still living in Poland left the country. In 1970, Gomułka was ousted; his successor, Edward Gierek (1913–2001), pursued a policy of liberalisation with minor concessions.

The Warsaw Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the People’s Republic of Poland was signed on 7 December 1970. In it, both sides stated that the Oder–Neisse line ‘constitutes the western state border of the People’s Republic of Poland’ (Art. I). The image of Willy Brandt (1913–1992) kneeling on 7 December 1970 in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial went around the world and became etched in the collective memory as a significant symbolic act of the 20th century (‘a place of remembrance’).

In 1976, strikes and protests broke out, and the Committee for the Defence of Workers (KOR) was founded in Warsaw. In 1979, the Polish Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) – a beacon of hope for the opposition – visited Poland and Warsaw for the first time. On 13 December 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) declared martial law in Poland, which was to last until 22 July 1983. In October 1984, Jerzy Popiełuszko (1947–1984), a priest at the Stanisław Kostka parish in Warsaw, was murdered by the security services. In the same year, 1984, the reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw was completed, for which donations had been collected throughout Poland for decades.

In the spring of 1989, the ‘Round Table’ negotiations took place at the Radziwiłł Palace in Warsaw; these led to the first partially free elections in Poland since the Second World War and set a model for the transition to democracy and a market economy across the whole of Eastern Europe. In June 1989, the first partially free elections were held, and the ‘transformation’ of the system began. Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927–2013) became the first non-communist Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland.

The German–Polish Border Treaty of 14 November 1990 and the German–Polish Treaty on Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation of 17 June 1991 placed cooperation on a new footing.

On 1 May 2004, the Republic of Poland joined the European Union.

Since the early 1990s, Warsaw has experienced an economic boom and has developed into an international economic hub. The main sectors of the economy are services and retail, banking, insurance, media and telecommunications.

The Fukier family, the Polonised branch of the Fugger family, forms part of the city’s economic history. Georg Fugger, from Augsburg, settled in Warsaw at the beginning of the 16th century. To this day, there is a restaurant in the Old Town on the site of the ‘Winiarnia Fukierowska’ wine cellar, which was famous for its unique collection of wines from across Europe. In 1939, the Fukier House was confiscated by the German occupiers and destroyed in 1944 during the uprising.

In the 18th century, German artists, architects, town planners and other specialists came to Warsaw with the Saxon kings. In the 19th century, German merchants, entrepreneurs and craftsmen settled in Warsaw – this led to the establishment of Johann Alexander Kerntopf’s piano factory in 1840, the Haberbusch & Schiele brewery in 1846, Emil Wedel founded the E. Wedel chocolate factory at the end of the 19th century, and Gottlieb Luis Weigle established a leather factory.^[8] The families often belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran Church and supported the Polish independence movement.

For centuries, Catholics, Protestants (often of German descent) and Orthodox Christians (often of Russian or Ukrainian descent), as well as Jews and followers of other religions, have lived together in Warsaw.

In the 17th century, the Catholic Church of St Benno (Kościół Św. Benona) was founded by Germans living in Warsaw. In the 18th century, the Redemptorist Klemens Maria Hofbauer (1751–1820), who was originally from Moravia, ministered here. He was also known as the ‘Apostle of Warsaw’ and is the patron saint of the city of Vienna. During his time in Warsaw, he also founded a branch of the order in Mitau/Jelgava (Latvia).

The Neoclassical Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession of the Holy Trinity (Polish: Kościół Ewangelicko-augsburski) on Małachowski Square was built under King Stanisław August Poniatowski as a symbol of religious tolerance (consecrated in 1781). For a long time the tallest building in Warsaw, it is reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon. Today, the church serves as the main church of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Warsaw.

A key figure was Bishop Juliusz Bursche (1862–1942), head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Poland. He sought to establish a strong Protestant church in Catholic Poland which – albeit with a predominantly German background – would remain loyal to the Polish state. As an opponent of the Nazi regime, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in September 1939 and died in a prison hospital in Berlin. A symbolic grave was erected for him in the Protestant cemetery in Warsaw.

Between 1918 and 1939, Warsaw was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe (the second largest in the world after New York), numbering 380,000 people; in other words, almost 30 per cent of the city’s inhabitants were Jewish. They largely adhered to a traditional, Orthodox religious code of conduct, made their living from crafts, trade and industry, and belonged primarily to the petty bourgeoisie and the working class. From 1918 onwards, Jews formally enjoyed full civil rights, but equality was limited in practice (for example, in the economic sphere). A nationalist press poisoned the atmosphere during the interwar period.

Some Warsaw Jews had assimilated into cultural life – for example, the journalist and founder of the Philharmonic, Aleksander Rajchman (1855–1915), the composer Ludwik (Louis) Grossman (1835–1915) and the conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg (1879–1953). The vast majority, however, were not assimilated and formed a distinct community.

Of the ‘Saxon Axis’ – the largest Baroque urban development, modelled on the buildings of Louis XIV – only a section of the former Saxon Garden remains. From 1713 onwards, King August II and later King August III intended to build a ‘Polish Versailles’ here. The east-west axis ran 1.5 km at right angles from ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście towards the west. The complex, which was severely damaged during the Second World War, included the Saxon Palace and a geometrically laid-out garden, which was opened in 1727 as the first public park for the people of Warsaw. Plans to rebuild the Saxon Palace and Brühl Palace are repeatedly discussed. Under the last Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, a number of prestigious building projects were realised, such as the Łazienki Palace by Domenico Merlini (1772–1795) and other Neoclassical pleasure palaces in the park of the same name.

Stanisław August’s court painter, the Venetian Bernardo Bellotto (1720–1780), known as ‘Canaletto’, painted 57 pictures depicting views of Warsaw. After the Second World War, his vedute served as models for restorers and architects during the reconstruction.

During the interwar period, Warsaw, as the capital of the re-established Polish state, experienced a building boom. Ministries and other public buildings were constructed, initially in the Neoclassical style. In the new residential districts in the neighbourhoods of Żoliborz, Ochota, Mokotów and Saska Kępa, the Heimatstil – modelled on manor house architecture from around 1800 – was replaced in the late 1920s by the ‘Neues Bauen’ style, which shaped social housing as well as comfortable detached houses and blocks of flats.^[11]

Whilst the neighbourhoods mentioned largely survived the Second World War, the city centre suffered severe destruction as early as the first weeks of the war. The Royal Castle caught fire during the air raid on 17 September 1939 and was looted; in 1944, it was completely destroyed.

The Nazi plans for Warsaw as a ‘new German city’[^12] began in November 1939; by January 1940, the so-called Pabst Plan was in place^[13] for the ‘dismantling of the Polish city’ was drawn up, which became a symbol of the German policy of extermination: Warsaw was to lose its significance as a Polish city, reduced from a metropolis of one million to a small town, whilst also being redesigned with buildings for the Party and the state (Gauforum, Party Centre). The Old Town and the Saxon Garden served as links to a past claimed as ‘German’; streets and squares were renamed ( Plac Piłsudskiego, for example, became ‘Adolf-Hitler-Platz’), the Belvedere in Łazienki Park (renamed ‘Seegarten’) was to become the seat of the new rulers. In 1942–43, a huge domed building was planned as a People’s Hall to replace Warsaw Castle. The plans were never realised.

The old town, dating from around 1300, with its patrician houses in the Renaissance, Baroque or Classicist style – which had been 93 per cent destroyed in 1944 and subsequently systematically burnt down or blown up, house by house and street by street – was reconstructed between 1949 and 1953. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981.^[14] At the same time, the redevelopment of the shopping streets dating from around 1900 began in the style of Socialist Realism; parts of the Jewish ghetto in Muranów were also built over in this way. The 44-storey ‘Palace of Culture’ was modelled on Moscow’s architecture and was presented as ‘Stalin’s gift’ to the Polish people. The modernist architecture of the 1960s and 1970s characterises the large department stores on ul. Marszałkowska and al. Jerozolimskich.

From the 1990s onwards, numerous high-rise buildings made of mirrored glass and steel sprang up on the outskirts of the city centre, transforming the city’s skyline (e.g. Varso Tower – at 310 metres, the tallest building; Warsaw Spire – 220 metres; Złota 44 – 192 metres, and the Intercontinental Hotel – 164 metres).

A public Polish opera house had already existed as early as 1765, and the National Theatre (Teatr Narodowy) became a major cultural institution. Even during the Partitions of Poland, it was possible here ‘to sing and speak Polish in public with official tolerance’.[^15] In the 19th century, there was a strong focus on Warsaw as the capital of Polish music and culture. It was here, for instance, that the opera *Halka* by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–1872) had its world premiere in 1858. On 13 September 1919, this opera opened the first season of the independent Polish state. It is still regarded today as the Polish national opera.

Józef Elsner (1769–1854), a native of Silesia, was musical director at the National Theatre, a composer and a music publisher; he played an important role in music education in Warsaw. He founded the first conservatoire and taught the composer Frédéric (Fryderyk) Chopin, as well as Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807–1867) and Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831). Together with E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), he founded the ‘Musikalische Ressource’, a society comprising both Poles and Germans.

Alongside the traditional salon culture of upper-middle-class families – including, amongst others, the Monday evenings hosted by the music publisher Feliks Gebethner (1832–1887) from 1879 to 1887 – and patronage, the late 19th century saw the increasing emergence of public and corporate structures such as societies and associations, as well as a vibrant urban musical life featuring opera and concerts, and music education institutions such as the Academy of Music and the Conservatoire. In 1871, the Warsaw Music Society (Polish: Warszawskie Towarzystwo Muzyczne) was founded, and the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall was completed in 1902. In 1927, the first Chopin Competition took place in Warsaw. Nevertheless, the city’s musical life remained fragmented; there was a consensus that Warsaw was a Polish city rather than a multinational one, which led to the marginalisation of certain national minority groups.

During the German occupation, cinemas and theatres were effectively closed; music remained the only form of entertainment. Dancing, the performance of Chopin’s works and jazz were all banned; nevertheless, such music was played at clandestine gatherings or in cafés and nightspots. Upmarket establishments were permitted ‘for Germans only’.

After the Second World War, jazz music once again played an important role: in 1947, the first public jazz concert after the war (‘jam session’) took place at the Warsaw YMCA Club (Young Men’s Christian Association) under the direction of the journalist Leopold Tyrmand (1920–1985).

Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874–1951) 1947 melodrama for a narrator, male choir and orchestra, *A Survivor from Warsaw*, premiered in the USA in 1948. The text (in English, German and Hebrew) is said to be based on the accounts of a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.

In 1887, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859–1917) published a pamphlet in Warsaw under the pseudonym ‘Dr Esperanto’, setting out the principles of the new international language Esperanto as a planned language designed to improve international understanding.

In 1912, the doctor, author and educator Janusz Korczak (born Henryk Goldszmit, 1878–1942) took over the management of the new Jewish orphanage, where he practised innovative educational methods (the ‘Children’s Republic model’). In 1942, he was deported to Treblinka with the children of the orphanage and murdered there.

Following the occupation of Poland in 1939, the universities were dissolved. However, the Secret University of Warsaw (Polish: Tajny Uniwersytet Warszawski) continued to operate underground until 1944, drawing on historical models from the period following the Third Partition of Poland.

Today, Warsaw is a major centre for academia: the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polish: Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN), various higher education institutions such as the University of Warsaw (Polish: Uniwersytet Warszawski), the Warsaw University of Technology (Polish: Politechnika Warszawska), the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music (Polish: Uniwersytet Muzyczny Fryderyka Chopina), the Academy of Fine Arts (Polish: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych) and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University of Warsaw, as well as libraries and archives, are all based here.

The Warsaw-based book trade and publishing firm Gebethner i Wolff was founded by two partners of German origin, Gustaw Adolf Gebethner (1831–1901) and Robert Wolff (1833–1910). The first bookshop opened in 1857 on Krakowskie Przedmiejście Street.[¹⁶] The company published periodicals (such as *Tygodnik Illustrowany*, the ‘Illustrated Weekly’) and books – primarily works of fiction, such as those by Bolesław Prus (1847–1912), Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916), Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910) and Władysław Reymont (1867–1925), as well as academic and school textbooks, and musical works (e.g. by Stanisław Moniuszko).

Apart from the aforementioned writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, many prominent literary figures are associated with Warsaw – novelists such as Bolesław Prus, Henryk Sienkiewicz (Nobel Prize 1905) and Władysław Reymont (Nobel Prize 1924), the poets of the Skamander group during the interwar period, and, after the Second World War, the poets Miron Białoszewski (1922–1983) and Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998), as well as the writers Hanna Krall (born 1935), Maria Nurowska (b. 1944) and Magdalena Tulli (b. 1955).

Literature also often had political significance in Warsaw. For instance, the March Unrest in Poland in 1968 was triggered after the play *Dziady* (*Forefathers’ Eve*) by the Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) had been taken off the programme. Written during the period when the country was partitioned in the 19th century, it presents a vision of a free, new Poland – which in 1968 was deemed too sensitive and critical by the mark.

As a Prussian civil servant, E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) lived in Warsaw from 1804 until the French troops marched in in 1806, leading what he described in a letter to his friend Hippel in 1805 as a ‘pleasant artistic life’. During this period, he composed (including the Warsaw Mass, 1805), conducted, painted and drew; he later drew on these experiences in works such as the short story *The Vow* (1817).

In 1946, Władysław Szpilman’s (1911–2000) account of his survival as a Jew in Warsaw during the Second World War was published (*Śmierć miasta* [*The Death of the City*]), in an expanded edition in 1998 (*The Miraculous Survival*), and in 2002 also in Roman Polański’s film adaptation (*The Pianist*). Szpilman, as a pianist with Polish Radio, had given a Chopin recital which turned out to be the station’s final broadcast in September 1939. After the war, the station resumed broadcasting with a Chopin concert, once again performed by Szpilman.

In 1986, the novel *Początek* [The Beginning] by Andrzej Szczypiorski (1928–2000) was published in German translation under the title *Die schöne Frau Seidenman*; it deals with Poles, Jews and Germans in Warsaw during the Second World War.

Wolf Biermann (born 1936) translated Yitzhak Katzenelson’s (1886–1944) Lament for the Shoah : Dos lied vunem ojsgehargetn jidischn volk – Great Song of the Exterminated Jewish People (1994) from Yiddish into German. It depicts the helplessness of the victims, but also the heroic resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters.

In numerous autobiographies, survivors recount their experiences of the Second World War in Warsaw, including the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920–2013) in *Mein Leben* (1999).

Warsaw is a place of national remembrance – the city itself is a monument that has risen anew like a ‘phoenix from the ashes’. Its history as the capital of Poland has been closely intertwined with the country’s history for 400 years. One of the city’s landmarks, the Baroque Sigismund Column on Castle Square, was erected in 1644 in memory of King Sigismund III Vasa, who had made the city the Polish capital in 1596.

Many places in Warsaw are steeped in history, with numerous monuments and commemorative plaques marking significant events. Particular focus is placed on the Second World War, with its three major waves of destruction: the events of 1939, the razing of the ghetto in 1943, and the systematic demolition of houses and entire streets at the end of the war. In his typology of urbicide in Europe, Karl Schlögel refers to Warsaw as a ‘very specific experience’ in which the eradication of human settlement was an end in itself: ‘Rendering uninhabitable, depopulation: Warsaw’.^[17]

Every year on 1 August, a minute’s silence is observed at 5 pm to commemorate the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. Under communist rule, remembrance of the uprising was suppressed, as it was led by the Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa).

Among the city’s most important monuments are the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Polish: Grób Nieznanego Żołnierza, 1923 ) on Pilsudskiego Square, situated beneath a remnant of the arcades of the former Saxon Palace; the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto (Polish: Pomnik Bohaterów Getta, 1947 ) by Nathan Rapaport, and the Monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising (Polish: Pomnik Powstania Warszawskiego, 1989).

Whilst the city was reduced to rubble, the cemeteries (with the exception of the Muslim-Tatar cemetery) escaped destruction during the war – including the Powązki Cemetery with its seven sections for different faiths – and even the Jewish cemetery remained intact (containing the graves of Ludwik Zamenhof and Adam Czerniaków (1880–1942), the Chair of the Jewish community. A symbolic grave was erected here after the Second World War in honour of the educator Janusz Korczak).

Warsaw’s museums include the Royal Castle in the Old Town, the palaces and grounds in Łazienki Park, and the royal summer residence on the southern outskirts of the city in Wilanów, as well as the Chopin Museum in the Ostrogski Palace, the City History Museum on the Ring Road, and the Pawiak Museum, which served as Warsaw’s political prison from the 19th century onwards and was also used as a concentration camp by the Nazis until 1944. The National Museum (Polish: Muzeum Narodowe) houses numerous works of art that were transferred to the Polish capital after 1945 from the museums of the former German eastern provinces, such as the so-called St Hedwig’s Altar (second quarter of the 15th century) from Wrocław.

Newly established in recent decades are the Warsaw Uprising Museum (Polish: Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego, 2004) and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polish: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich, Polin, 2013/14).