Rynek Starego Miasta

The Old Town Market Place in Warsaw is a large, perfect square lined with brightly painted townhouses. Every building here is a replica. During the final months of the second world war, German forces systematically demolished the entire square block by block. When the war ended, city planners used seventeenth and eighteenth century paintings by Canaletto the younger to recreate the facades exactly as they had appeared before the destruction. Jan Zachwatowicz led the team that rebuilt this heart of the city.