Every design for Pruszków

Pruszków stands on the Utrata at the western edge of the Warsaw metropolitan area, where the Aleje Jerozolimskie leave the capital and carry on into town as aleja Wojska Polskiego. It is the largest place in the Warsaw area outside the city itself, and it has always lived with one eye on its big neighbour.

For many people Pruszków feels like a town shaped by the rails. The Warsaw–Vienna Railway brought the first factories in the nineteenth century, turning out needles, porcelain, faience and soap, and later the Elektryczna Kolej Dojazdowa, Poland's first electrified commuter line, tied the town even closer to the capital. Its memory carries weight as well: the Dulag 121 Museum marks the camp through which Poles expelled from Warsaw were sent, and the former 'Nasz dom' orphanage recalls Janusz Korczak. The psychiatric hospital at Tworki has been part of local life for well over a century, and today the town is also home to the country's chief indoor velodrome.

Grow up here and the map fills itself in: the commuter train, the shade of the Park Potulickich, the Pałacyk Sokoła and the Muzeum Starożytnego Hutnictwa Mazowieckiego with its story of ancient iron-making.