I went with friends to Warsaw in April 2015 for the 17th International Chopin Piano Competition. Whilst there, we took the opportunity to explore the Historic Centre, which is a pretty small section of the centre of the city that showcases what the area was like prior to its destruction by Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

Over 85% of the city’s buildings were destroyed in the war, as depicted movingly in the Roman Polanski film The Pianist.

It was in response to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 that the Germans took the decision to annihilate the city, destroying over 700 years of historical buildings ranging from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. The remarkable thing about what the people of Poland achieved in five years after the war was that they followed historical plans and imagery in great detail, enabling them to rebuild the city very much as it had been.