The European cities that put our post-war planners to shame
Twentieth century Europe unleashed unprecedented destructive violence upon itself. Hundreds of cities were shelled, mortared, fire-bombed and fought over. Steeples were toppled, cathedrals levelled, cloth halls and town halls pulverised and streets so ruined that their very course could no longer be discerned beneath the bluffs and gullies of heaped rubble. From the French port of Saint Nazaire in the west, to Stalingrad in the east, European streets and squares, towns and cities were never as ruined as they were by the conflicts.
What phoenix should emerge from the ashes? British planners were certain. Cities should be conceived afresh. J.B. Priestley, visiting the beautiful medieval city of Coventry in 1934, found it so attractive that, he wrote, “it might have been transported to Italy”. The Luftwaffe proceeded to damage two thirds of the city’s buildings and destroy 4,300 homes. Coventry’s city architect, Donald Gibson, did not conceal his pleasure. “The bombs,” he wrote, were “a blessing in disguise”. He proceeded to demolish most of the city’s remaining medieval buildings. Coventry does not look like Italy now.
Many assume that the British post-war response was the standard one. It wasn’t. Britain’s predilection to demolish and start again was the outlier, not the norm. Across Europe, streets were often re-created where they had run before, and buildings were re-built either as they had been or in a simplified variant. This organic approach was quicker, cheaper and permitted citizens to maintain their sense of home and history. And it is still continuing.
Today, we visit many of these towns and cities as tourists, often unaware that their “historic” streets are only a lifetime old. Three such recreated cities worth seeing are Warsaw, Dresden and Budapest.
Eighty-five percent of Warsaw was destroyed in the Second World War, a population of a million fell to a few thousand. The Polish government resigned itself to moving the capital to Lodź and abandoning the city. Two officials, Stanislaw Lorentz and Jan Zachwatowicz, argued instead that resuscitating Warsaw was “the last victorious act in the fight with the enemy”. Using the 18th-century paintings of Canaletto’s pupil, Bernardo Bellotto, as a guide, the meticulous reconstruction was agreed in February 1945, before the war was even over, and began immediately. The surviving population were the workforce. When I first visited ten years ago with a senior Polish official whose mother had worked on the reconstruction, I asked him, “How did the post-war government afford this?” He replied, “That is such a Western question. The people were given bricks and food and put to work.”
For many it was a lifetime’s labour. The town square, the surrounding streets, the city walls and finally the Royal Castle were rebuilt, brick by brick, corbel by corbel, over 40 years. In 1980 Unesco placed the (new) Old Town on the World Heritage list. The Jablonowski Palace was only completed in 1997. When President Biden gave a speech in front of the Royal Castle a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, choosing it as a symbol of timeless freedom and culture, how many of his global audience knew that the building was less than 40 years old?
Dresden’s modern renaissance is equally remarkable. A city that was barely worth visiting 30 years ago is recreating itself as Florence on the Elbe. Dresden’s 1945 immolation is infamous. In the war’s dying months, 1,299 Allied bombers levelled a city of baroque beauty. Most symbolically, one of Europe’s great churches, the Frauenkirche or Church of Our Lady, burnt for two days and nights before collapsing.
Less well known is the sequel. The city centre remained empty for years. Early rebuilding was ugly and streetless. But the people wanted their city back. And, even under communism, they began to get it. The Zwinger palace and gardens were recreated by 1963. The Semper opera house reopened in 1985. Restoration accelerated with German reunification. Dresdeners called en masse for the recreation of their lost Frauenkirche and the whole town centre. Architects objected but the will of ordinary people was irresistible. Over 13,000 donors from around the world (with the British reportedly being the second largest contributors) gave £90m to what was called “the miracle of Dresden”. On October 30 2005, the recreated Frauenkirche’s bells pealed for the first time in 60 years. Many visitors wept with joy. Poignantly, the huge dome’s crowning golden cross was forged by a British silversmith, Alan Smith, whose father piloted one of the Dresden raid’s RAF bombers. Sometimes history takes a long time to get to the right place. Around the dome the city streets are now re-discovering their historic form. All the baroque buildings besides which citizens and tourists throng are modern.
Much of Budapest, including its totemic Chain Bridge and Buda Castle on the Danube’s west bank, were likewise destroyed, predominantly in the city’s 1944-45 siege. You would not know it now. The Chain Bridge was recreated by 1949. In the 1950s and 1960s the medieval fortifications were rebuilt, replete with towers, walls, gatehouses and the gothic wing of the Royal Palace. Other interventions were less happy.
The palace’s baroque interiors had partly survived the war but, reeking of royal privilege, they were largely destroyed. Nevertheless, by 1987 Unesco was able to declare Buda Castle a World Heritage Site, even though much of it was new. Since then, under Hungary’s controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the policy of reconstruction has continued with huge and new baroque palaces, pulverised by war, being rebuilt from nothing: the Royal Riding Hall and Castle Guards’ Barracks are complete.
The huge Archduke Joseph’s Palace is following. Recent tourists love it. But if you want to enjoy pre-war Budapest recreated, you might want to go soon. There are ominous plans to build a city of skyscrapers on the other side of the Danube. You can enjoy an unviolated Habsburg skyline for now – but for how long?
Nicholas Boys Smith is the founding chairman of Create Streets. His history of London’s streets, No Free Parking, is available from Bonnier Books.
