In 1935 Warsaw was the capital of a country that had been independent for only 17 years, after more than a century of partitions.
During the Second World War around six million Polish citizens were killed. After the 1944 Uprising the Germans destroyed Warsaw street by street. By 1945 about 85% of the historic centre was gone.
The city was rebuilt from the rubble. The Old Town was reconstructed so carefully that UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1980. But for four decades this happened under a communist system imposed from outside, which kept the country poor.
In 1989 Poland got its freedom back peacefully, through the Round Table talks and the first partly free elections in the Eastern Bloc. It joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004.
Since then it has become one of Europe’s biggest economic success stories. It was the only EU economy to avoid recession in 2009, and living standards went from about a third of Western Europe’s to around four fifths of the EU average. Warsaw now has the tallest building in the EU.
I made this map because I wanted everyone to see that whole story in one place.