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dignitaries' speeches, fairs and fireworks by the river bank.
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As interesting examples of expositions the most notable are: the world's first Museum of Posters boasting one of the largest collections of art posters in the world, Museum of Hunting and Riding and the Railway Museum. From among Warsaw's 60 museums,
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the most prestigious ones are National Museum with a collection of works whose origin ranges in time from antiquity till the present epoch as well as one of the best collections of paintings in the country including some paintings from Adolf
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Hitler's private collection, and Museum of the Polish Army whose set portrays the history of arms.
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A fine tribute to the fall of Warsaw and history of Poland can be found in the Warsaw Uprising Museum and in the Katyń Museum which preserves the memory of the crime. The Warsaw Uprising Museum also operates a rare preserved and operating historic
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stereoscopic theatre, the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. The Museum of Independence preserves patriotic and political objects connected with Poland's struggles for independence. Dating back to 1936 Warsaw Historical Museum contains 60 rooms which host a
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permanent exhibition of the history of Warsaw from its origins until today.
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The 17th century Royal Ujazdów Castle currently houses Centre for Contemporary Art, with some permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, shows and creative workshops. The Centre currently realizes about 500 projects a year. Zachęta National
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Gallery of Art, the oldest exhibition site in Warsaw, with a tradition stretching back to the mid-19th century organises exhibitions of modern art by Polish and international artists and promotes art in many other ways. Since 2011 Warsaw Gallery
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Weekend is held on last weekend of September.
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Their local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win Ekstraklasa Championship in 2000. They also won the country’s championship in 1946, and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at
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Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town. Polonia was relegated from the country's top flight in 2013 because of their disastrous financial situation. They are now playing in the 4th league (5th tier in Poland) -the bottom
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professional league in the National – Polish Football Association (PZPN) structure.
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The mermaid (syrenka) is Warsaw's symbol and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century. The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390,
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consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis (Seal of the city of Warsaw). City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a
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sword in its claws. In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:
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The origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of
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Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came
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to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.
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Tamara de Lempicka was a famous artist born in Warsaw. She was born Maria Górska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 married a Polish lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki. Better than anyone else she represented the Art Deco style in painting and art. Nathan
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Alterman, the Israeli poet, was born in Warsaw, as was Moshe Vilenski, the Israeli composer, lyricist, and pianist, who studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory. Warsaw was the beloved city of Isaac Bashevis Singer, which he described in many of his
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novels: Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever, he commented.
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In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world. It was also ranked as one of the most liveable cities in Central Europe. Today Warsaw is considered an "Alpha–" global city, a major international
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tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. Warsaw's economy, by a wide variety of industries, is characterised by FMCG manufacturing, metal processing, steel and electronic manufacturing and food processing. The city
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is a significant centre of research and development, BPO, ITO, as well as of the Polish media industry. The Warsaw Stock Exchange is one of the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe. Frontex, the European Union agency for external
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border security, has its headquarters in Warsaw. It has been said that Warsaw, together with Frankfurt, London, Paris and Barcelona is one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union. Warsaw has also been called
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"Eastern Europe’s chic cultural capital with thriving art and club scenes and serious restaurants".
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The first historical reference to Warsaw dates back to the year 1313, at a time when Kraków served as the Polish capital city. Due to its central location between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's capitals of Kraków and Vilnius, Warsaw became the
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capital of the Commonwealth and of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland when King Sigismund III Vasa moved his court from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Warsaw was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia. In
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1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, the city became the official capital of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a puppet state of the First French Empire established by Napoleon Bonaparte. In accordance with the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, the Russian
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Empire annexed Warsaw in 1815 and it became part of the "Congress Kingdom". Only in 1918 did it regain independence from the foreign rule and emerge as a new capital of the independent Republic of Poland. The German invasion in 1939, the massacre of
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the Jewish population and deportations to concentration camps led to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and to the major and devastating Warsaw Uprising between August and October 1944. Warsaw gained the title of the "Phoenix City" because it
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has survived many wars, conflicts and invasions throughout its long history. Most notably, the city required painstaking rebuilding after the extensive damage it suffered in World War II, which destroyed 85% of its buildings. On 9 November 1940, the
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city was awarded Poland's highest military decoration for heroism, the Virtuti Militari, during the Siege of Warsaw (1939).
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The city is the seat of a Roman Catholic archdiocese (left bank of the Vistula) and diocese (right bank), and possesses various universities, most notably the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw, two opera houses, theatres,
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museums, libraries and monuments. The historic city-centre of Warsaw with its picturesque Old Town in 1980 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other main architectural attractions include the Castle Square with the Royal Castle and the
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iconic King Sigismund's Column, St. John's Cathedral, Market Square, palaces, churches and mansions all displaying a richness of colour and architectural detail. Buildings represent examples of nearly every European architectural style and
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historical period. Warsaw provides many examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque and neoclassical periods, and around a quarter of the city is filled with luxurious parks and royal gardens.
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Warsaw's name in the Polish language is Warszawa, approximately /vɑːrˈʃɑːvə/ (also formerly spelled Warszewa and Warszowa), meaning "belonging to Warsz", Warsz being a shortened form of the masculine name of Slavic origin Warcisław; see also
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14f3b6bd5d00d53e67a87b1e7b0beee3_1
etymology of Wrocław. Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, and his wife, Sawa. According to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula River with whom Wars fell in love. In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century
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nobleman who owned a village located at the modern-day site of Mariensztat neighbourhood. See also the Vršovci family which had escaped to Poland. The official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa (English: "The Capital City of Warsaw"). A
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native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak (male), warszawianka (female), warszawiacy (plural).
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The first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were located in Bródno (9th/10th century) and Jazdów (12th/13th century). After Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small
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fishing village called Warszowa. The Prince of Płock, Bolesław II of Masovia, established this settlement, the modern-day Warsaw, in about 1300. In the beginning of the 14th century it became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia, becoming the
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official capital of Masovian Duchy in 1413. 14th-century Warsaw's economy rested on mostly crafts and trade. Upon the extinction of the local ducal line, the duchy was reincorporated into the Polish Crown in 1526.
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In 1529, Warsaw for the first time became the seat of the General Sejm, permanent from 1569. In 1573 the city gave its name to the Warsaw Confederation, formally establishing religious freedom in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to its central
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location between the Commonwealth's capitals of Kraków and Vilnius, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland when King Sigismund III Vasa moved his court from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596. In the following
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years the town expanded towards the suburbs. Several private independent districts were established, the property of aristocrats and the gentry, which were ruled by their own laws. Three times between 1655–1658 the city was under siege and three
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times it was taken and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces.
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Warsaw remained the capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1796, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia to become the capital of the province of South Prussia. Liberated by Napoleon's army in 1806, Warsaw was made the capital of
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the newly created Duchy of Warsaw. Following the Congress of Vienna of 1815, Warsaw became the centre of the Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy under a personal union with Imperial Russia. The Royal University of Warsaw was established in
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1816.
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Warsaw was occupied by Germany from 4 August 1915 until November 1918. The Allied Armistice terms required in Article 12 that Germany withdraw from areas controlled by Russia in 1914, which included Warsaw. Germany did so, and underground leader
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Piłsudski returned to Warsaw on 11 November and set up what became the Second Polish Republic, with Warsaw the capital. In the course of the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920, the huge Battle of Warsaw was fought on the eastern outskirts of the city in
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which the capital was successfully defended and the Red Army defeated. Poland stopped by itself the full brunt of the Red Army and defeated an idea of the "export of the revolution".
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After the German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 began the Second World War, Warsaw was defended till September 27. Central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All
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higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population – several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city – herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. The city would become the centre of urban resistance to Nazi rule in
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occupied Europe. When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's "Final Solution" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the Ghetto held out for almost
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a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.
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By July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Germans toward Warsaw. Knowing that Stalin was hostile to the idea of an independent Poland, the Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army
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(AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw from the Germans before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw Uprising began. The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, was partially successful,
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however it went on for 63 days. Eventually the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Polish civilian deaths are
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estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.
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After World War II, under a Communist regime set up by the conquering Soviets, the "Bricks for Warsaw" campaign was initiated, and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the housing shortage, along with other typical
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buildings of an Eastern Bloc city, such as the Palace of Culture and Science, a gift from the Soviet Union. The city resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country's centre of political and economic life. Many of the historic streets,
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buildings, and churches were restored to their original form. In 1980, Warsaw's historic Old Town was inscribed onto UNESCO's World Heritage list.
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John Paul II's visits to his native country in 1979 and 1983 brought support to the budding solidarity movement and encouraged the growing anti-communist fervor there. In 1979, less than a year after becoming pope, John Paul celebrated Mass in
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Victory Square in Warsaw and ended his sermon with a call to "renew the face" of Poland: Let Thy Spirit descend! Let Thy Spirit descend and renew the face of the land! This land! These words were very meaningful for the Polish citizens who
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understood them as the incentive for the democratic changes.
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Warsaw lies in east-central Poland about 300 km (190 mi) from the Carpathian Mountains and about 260 km (160 mi) from the Baltic Sea, 523 km (325 mi) east of Berlin, Germany. The city straddles the Vistula River. It is located in the heartland of the
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Masovian Plain, and its average elevation is 100 metres (330 ft) above sea level. The highest point on the left side of the city lies at a height of 115.7 metres (379.6 ft) ("Redutowa" bus depot, district of Wola), on the right side – 122.1 metres
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(400.6 ft) ("Groszówka" estate, district of Wesoła, by the eastern border). The lowest point lies at a height 75.6 metres (248.0 ft) (at the right bank of the Vistula, by the eastern border of Warsaw). There are some hills (mostly artificial)
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located within the confines of the city – e.g. Warsaw Uprising Hill (121 metres (397.0 ft)), Szczęśliwice hill (138 metres (452.8 ft) – the highest point of Warsaw in general).
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Warsaw is located on two main geomorphologic formations: the plain moraine plateau and the Vistula Valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Vistula River is the specific axis of Warsaw, which divides the city into two parts,
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left and right. The left one is situated both on the moraine plateau (10 to 25 m (32.8 to 82.0 ft) above Vistula level) and on the Vistula terraces (max. 6.5 m (21.3 ft) above Vistula level). The significant element of the relief, in this part of
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Warsaw, is the edge of moraine plateau called Warsaw Escarpment. It is 20 to 25 m (65.6 to 82.0 ft) high in the Old Town and Central district and about 10 m (32.8 ft) in the north and south of Warsaw. It goes through the city and plays an important
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role as a landmark.
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The plain moraine plateau has only a few natural and artificial ponds and also groups of clay pits. The pattern of the Vistula terraces is asymmetrical. The left side consist mainly of two levels: the highest one contains former flooded terraces and
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the lowest one the flood plain terrace. The contemporary flooded terrace still has visible valleys and ground depressions with water systems coming from the Vistula old – riverbed. They consist of still quite natural streams and lakes as well as the
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pattern of drainage ditches. The right side of Warsaw has a different pattern of geomorphological forms. There are several levels of the plain Vistula terraces (flooded as well as former flooded once) and only small part and not so visible moraine
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escarpment. Aeolian sand with a number of dunes parted by peat swamps or small ponds cover the highest terrace. These are mainly forested areas (pine forest).
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Warsaw's mixture of architectural styles reflects the turbulent history of the city and country. During the Second World War, Warsaw was razed to the ground by bombing raids and planned destruction. After liberation, rebuilding began as in other
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cities of the communist-ruled PRL. Most of the historical buildings were thoroughly reconstructed. However, some of the buildings from the 19th century that had been preserved in reasonably reconstructible form were nonetheless eradicated in the
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1950s and 1960s (e.g. Leopold Kronenberg Palace). Mass residential blocks were erected, with basic design typical of Eastern bloc countries.
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Gothic architecture is represented in the majestic churches but also at the burgher houses and fortifications. The most significant buildings are St. John's Cathedral (14th century), the temple is a typical example of the so-called Masovian gothic
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style, St. Mary's Church (1411), a town house of Burbach family (14th century), Gunpowder Tower (after 1379) and the Royal Castle Curia Maior (1407–1410). The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of Baryczko
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merchant family (1562), building called "The Negro" (early 17th century) and Salwator tenement (1632). The most interesting examples of mannerist architecture are the Royal Castle (1596–1619) and the Jesuit Church (1609–1626) at Old Town. Among the
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first structures of the early baroque the most important are St. Hyacinth's Church (1603–1639) and Sigismund's Column (1644).
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Building activity occurred in numerous noble palaces and churches during the later decades of the 17th century. One of the best examples of this architecture are Krasiński Palace (1677–1683), Wilanów Palace (1677–1696) and St. Kazimierz Church
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(1688–1692). The most impressive examples of rococo architecture are Czapski Palace (1712–1721), Palace of the Four Winds (1730s) and Visitationist Church (façade 1728–1761). The neoclassical architecture in Warsaw can be described by the simplicity
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of the geometrical forms teamed with a great inspiration from the Roman period. Some of the best examples of the neoclassical style are the Palace on the Water (rebuilt 1775–1795), Królikarnia (1782–1786), Carmelite Church (façade 1761–1783) and
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Evangelical Holy Trinity Church (1777–1782). The economic growth during the first years of Congress Poland caused a rapid rise architecture. The Neoclassical revival affected all aspects of architecture, the most notable are the Great Theater
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(1825–1833) and buildings located at Bank Square (1825–1828).
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Exceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war (like mentioned Kronenberg Palace and Insurance Company Rosja building) or they were rebuilt in socialist realism
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style (like Warsaw Philharmony edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris). Despite that the Warsaw University of Technology building (1899–1902) is the most interesting of the late 19th-century architecture. Some 19th-century buildings
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in the Praga district (the Vistula’s right bank) have been restored although many have been poorly maintained. Warsaw’s municipal government authorities have decided to rebuild the Saxon Palace and the Brühl Palace, the most distinctive buildings in
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prewar Warsaw.
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There are also many places commemorating the heroic history of Warsaw. Pawiak, an infamous German Gestapo prison now occupied by a Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and the museum, is only the beginning of a walk in the traces of Heroic City. The
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Warsaw Citadel, an impressive 19th-century fortification built after the defeat of the November Uprising, was a place of martyr for the Poles. Another important monument, the statue of Little Insurgent located at the ramparts of the Old Town,
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commemorates the children who served as messengers and frontline troops in the Warsaw Uprising, while the impressive Warsaw Uprising Monument by Wincenty Kućma was erected in memory of the largest insurrection of World War II.
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