Warsaw is the capital city of Poland and its largest city. It is located on the Vistula River roughly 370 kilometers (230 mi) from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2007 was estimated at 1,704,717, with a metropolitan area of approximately 3,350,000.
The first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were Bródno (9th/10th century) and Jazdów (12th/13th century).[10] After Jazdów was raided, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called Warszowa. This settlement Warszowa (at present Warsaw) a Płock prince established (about 1300), Bolesław II Mazovian (from 1294 prince of entire Masovia). In the beginning of the 14th century it became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia, becoming the capital of Masovia in 1413.
Due to its central location between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's capitals of Kraków and Vilnius, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and at the same time of the Polish Crown in 1596, when King Sigismund III Vasa moved the court from Kraków.Three times between 1655-1658 the city was under the siege and three times it was taken and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces.
Warsaw became the capital of the newly independent Poland in 1918. In the course of the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920, the huge Battle of Warsaw was fought on the Eastern outskirts of the city in which the capital was successfully defended and the Red Army defeated.
During the Second World War central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population — several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city — herded into the Warsaw Ghetto.
When the order came to annihilate the Ghetto as part of Hitler's "final solution" on April 19, 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the Ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, only few managed to escape or hide.
By July 1944 the Red Army was deep into Polish territory pursuing the Germans toward Warsaw. Knowing that Stalin was hostile to the idea of an independent Poland, the Polish government-in-exile based in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize the control of Warsaw from the Nazis just before the Red Army's arrival.
Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Soviet army was nearing the city very fast, the Home Army and the civilian population started the Warsaw Uprising.
The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, went on for 63 days, and eventually the Home Army fighters were forced to capitulate. They were transported to the POW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Hitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground, and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned.
In 1980 Warsaw's historic Old Town was inscribed onto UNESCO's World Heritage list.
Warsaw is currently experiencing the biggest economic boom of its history.
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