Stare miasto w Warszawie

Old Town in Warsaw

Documentary photographs of Warsaw by an unknown author, probably dating from the late 1930s or early 1940s. The film begins with a map indicating where the material was shot. We see, among others, a panorama of the Old Town from the side of the Vistula River and the Market Square and people walking around it. The shots are juxtaposed with photographs of the same locations, but after the war damage. We see, for example, ruined tenements, bullet and shrapnel holes in the façade details, tape stuck to the windowpanes at the time of the bombings, tons of rubble and devastated churches - the Archcathedral Basilica of St John the Baptist and the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.