Every design for Marki

In July 2019 surveyors fixed the geodetic centre of Mazovia in Marki – on the Zwałka, a hill raised over a rubbish tip that closed decades ago. It is a fitting detail for a town that lives in Warsaw's slipstream, just north-east of the capital, strung out along Aleja Piłsudskiego, the old main road out of the city.

The Dawna stacja "Marki", the old station, recalls the Marki Commuter Railway, a narrow-gauge line that ran from Warsaw through Marki to Radzymin from 1896 to 1974. In Stare Marki the Briggsówka still stands: rows of workers' houses built in the nineteenth century for the Briggs factory, one of only two such estates in Poland. Between new housing estates, the Park Miejski, the Czerwony Dwór and the Horowe Bagno nature reserve in Pustelnik, everyday life is a mix of commuting and quiet side streets, with the Długa and Czarna streams running through it all.

The town takes its name from the Marek family, granted royal land here late in the sixteenth century. Today the image that sticks is the Zwałka: an old tip turned into the point where Mazovia has its middle.