Warsaw Old Town Market Square

Warsaw's Old Town looks centuries old, but almost everything you see was rebuilt after 1945. Deliberately dynamited by the Germans after the 1944 uprising, the historic core was reconstructed between 1949 and 1953 using Bellotto's 18th-century vedute paintings as blueprints, along with salvaged fragments and old photographs. The result — colourful merchant houses ringing the Market Square, the Royal Castle, and the city walls — was so faithful that UNESCO listed it in 1980 as an 'outstanding example' of near-total reconstruction. A bronze Mermaid, Warsaw's sword-wielding guardian, stands at the square's centre, symbol of a city that refused to disappear.