Warsaw is an energetic metropolis offering a fascinating foray into urban Poland. It comes with both a hard-fought history and a modern vibrancy.

Today, Warsaw—pronounced “var-SHA-va” here— is Poland’s biggest city, with close to 2 million people. It’s muscular and sprawling, broad boulevards, imposing buildings, and glittering glass office towers.

Today’s Warsaw is a thriving European center of business, banking, and politics, with a cosmopolitan energy.

Warsaw’s glory days peaked between the World Wars, when it was one of Europe’s most genteel capitals. That spirit survives along its rebuilt main drag, the sweeping Royal Way, with elegant facades and its popularity with local strollers. Just being out and about, you feel the youthful confidence of this society. Stately hotels and government buildings—this is the president’s residence—add to the Royal Way’s grandeur.

The Blikle bakery is every Pole’s favorite for pączki…jelly donuts.

When locals here “go out for doughnuts,” they go out for pączki. My favorite is the classic. It’s filled with wild rose jam.

But it’s not all jelly doughnuts. Vast squares with memorials remind all of Poland’s hard-fought history. Here, the eternal flame honors war dead with numbers almost incomprehensible.

As the city was totally destroyed by Nazis in World War II, nearly everything you’ll see—palaces, churches, and fountains—was painstakingly rebuilt from the rubble of 1945. I keep having to remind myself that in this city hardly a building standing is over 80 years old. Consequently, Warsaw is an architectural jumble, rebuilt both old and new.

Warsaw’s meticulously rebuilt Old Town is dominated by its meticulously rebuilt Royal Castle.

The castle—a symbol of Polish sovereignty for over 400 years—boasts some of this country’s most lavish halls…gilded and glittering with chandeliers.

The palace reflects how Poland was independent and strong for centuries, starting in the Middle Ages.

When the home-grown dynasty died out, Poland’s nobility elected foreign kings at gatherings like this.

Many of those imported rulers squandered Poland’s resources on their own selfish agendas. They weakened the country until it actually ceased to exist in 1795.

For over 100 years, Poland disappeared from the map—partitioned by three empires: Prussia, Austria, and Russia. But the Poles succeeded in preserving their culture until their country was reborn in 1918 after WWI.

Today, back out on the streets, the atmospheric Old Town entertains tourists. Here the 21st century seems to rule these cobbled lanes.

In the center of the beautifully constructed Market Square is a popular sculpture. The mermaid—a symbol of Warsaw—serenades the townspeople, still welcoming friends while keeping out foes. To me, this fountain—always energetic with kids playing—feels like a celebration of life...Polish life.

The mermaid—a symbol of Warsaw—serenades the townspeople, still welcoming friends while keeping out foes. To me, this fountain—always energetic with kids playing —feels like a celebration of life…Polish life.

And Polish life comes with music—especially the genius of favorite son, Frédéric Chopin. On summer Sundays, Chopin concerts pack the park. It’s an expression of this city’s pride in its culture and in an enduring appetite for community.

Poland’s great Romantic composer sits under a willow tree. Though he lived and worked mostly in Paris, locals cherish the thought that Chopin’s inspiration came from memories of the breeze blowing through the willow trees of his native land, Poland.

Warsaw museums work hard to explain its complicated history. And much of Poland’s story is a Jewish story.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews celebrates a thousand years of Jews living in Poland.

A winding route traces their experience. With the relative tolerance of medieval kings, Jews became established in Polish society. But because they still suffered through pogroms and other persecution, few actual artifacts survive.

Many Jews lived in market towns called “shtetls,” with richly decorated wooden synagogues. Above the traditional elevated prayer platform, is a colorful ceiling…a humble canopy rich with symbolism.

When Poland regained its independence after World War I, Jewish culture blossomed. Especially in the 1920s when, for the first time, Jews had full citizenship and voting rights. And Warsaw was the biggest Jewish city in Europe.

Tragically, this flourishing of Jewish culture was crushed when Fascist Germany invaded in 1939. Jews were then corralled into a miserable ghetto…subjected to unlivable conditions before being shipped off to Nazi death camps and killed.

A monument captures the desperation of the ghetto’s last days: Realizing they were all doomed anyway, the haggard and hungry who remained staged a desperate uprising…nearly all were killed.

This was just one city’s experience in a Europe-wide Holocaust. In this attempted genocide, Hitler tried to rid the world of Jewish people. Of the six million he killed, half died here in Poland.

With its Jewish population decimated, Warsaw’s next chapter was a second valiant but doomed uprising—this time by the non-Jewish Poles who remained.

Under Nazi occupation, Poles had formed the biggest underground resistance army in history.

Late in the war, as the Nazis began to falter and the Soviets advanced, Poland’s Home Army mobilized to liberate the country.

But the Nazis regrouped and brutally put down the Warsaw Uprising. Hitler then ordered that Warsaw be “destroyed to its foundations.”

The Soviet Army sat here, across the river, watched, and waited. Finally, when the Germans were gone, the Russians marched in to claim the wasteland that was once Warsaw—kicking off over four decades of communist rule.

Like a phoenix, this city has risen from the ashes. And today, Warsaw is filled with a happy and youthful populace that has no living memory of those hard times.

Today’s Warsaw’s is hip and trendy. Hulking old buildings—no longer fascist or communist—are filled with a rainbow of global food choices.

“Post-industrial” architecture is all the rage. Old red-brick factories and power plants have been transformed into convivial hubs for dining, drinking, and shopping.