Not so Old Town

Last night the conference arranged a guided tour of Warsaw for us.  The most fascinating thing to learn about, is that 90% of Old Town is reproductions!  Almost of all the pictures I posted, are of buildings that are not even 60 years old.  The Royal castle for example was only completed in 1980.

After the war, many other European countries and business offered to help rebuild Warsaw, but they viewed it as an investment.  They wanted to build investment property.  The people of Warsaw, God bless them, just wanted their homes back.  "But you don't have any money" they were told.  So they rebuilt Old Town with their own hands.  Mostly by people who lived there before the war.  There some pictures on display (that I will try get shots) that show Old Town after the war.  It was basically heaps of bricks.

The stone in the center of this picture is one of the few original stones used to build the castle.  I'll try to get a better picture, but if you look closely you can see it has cracks and war damage.