Every design for Wrocław

Wrocław lies on the Oder in the Silesian Lowlands, a city threaded through by the river and four of its tributaries, with its oldest streets grown up around islets in the current. It is the historical capital of Silesia, and its story has passed through Polish, Bohemian, Austrian, Prussian and German hands before it became Polish again after the Second World War.

What people remember, though, is smaller and closer. Hunting for the little dwarfs that have become the city's symbol. A first lecture in the Aula Leopoldina. A queue outside the Afrykarium at Poland's oldest zoo. Evenings on one of Europe's largest market squares, under the oldest preserved town hall in the country, with a student crowd that makes Wrocław one of the youngest-feeling cities in Poland.

The Hala Stulecia, the Centennial Hall on the UNESCO list, stands for the city's modern side; the Muzeum Narodowe and the Arsenał Miejski for its long memory. Leave for a few years and you will still know the way from the river to the square without thinking. That is what home feels like here.