By the end of the Second World War, many of the Polish cities—and especially their historic centres—were in ruins. This was caused by both bombings and sieges conducted by the Nazis and Soviets. The particular group of cities is associated with former German lands—now called the “Recovered Territories”—which were incorporated into the borders of Poland as compensation for its Eastern Borderlands lost to the Soviet Union. These...

The urban structure of Gdańsk city centre is determined by two ring road complexes. The first of them, the Gdańsk Ring, has been designed by Hermann Josef Stübben as a result of a defortification at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This new modern zone of the city centre was destroyed like the rest of Gdańsk in the end of World War Two and had not been reconstructed as a result of de-Germanization of the Recovered Territories....