Every design for Warszawa

Warsaw spreads across both banks of the Vistula in east-central Poland, a capital that began as a small fishing town and became the seat of the Duchy of Masovia, then of the whole country. After Sigismund III moved his royal court here from Kraków, the river town grew into the place where Poland's president, parliament and central bank still sit today.

Kolumna Zygmunta, Sigismund's Column, marks the edge of the Old Town, where Rynek Starego Miasta opens up behind it. Almost everything around that square was burned and razed during the Second World War, and the rebuilt Old Town is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a reconstruction so careful that it reads as history rather than replica. The Barbakan still guards the way out of the old centre, while Pałac Kultury i Nauki holds the skyline and the Pałac na Wyspie sits on its island.

The Warsaw of today is metro lines, trams, the Varso Tower and Frontex, an alpha global city with eighteen districts and a stock exchange that is the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. If you know which bridge takes you home and which bank of the Vistula you belong to, you already know why this map matters to you.