Varsavia - Warsaw - Poland Visual Guide by Travel & Discover

The first historical reference to Warsaw dates back to the year 1313, when initially Kraków served as the Polish capital city. Due to its central location between the Commonwealth's capitals of Kraków and Vilnius, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland when King Sigismund III Vasa moved his court from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Warsaw was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, the city became the official capital of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a puppet state of the First French Empire created by Napoleon Bonaparte. With accordance to the decision of the Congress of Vienna, Warsaw in 1815 was annexed by the Russian Empire and became part of the "Congress Kingdom". Only in 1918 it regained independence from the foreign rule and emerged as a new capital of the independent Republic of Poland. Along with the German invasion in 1939, the massacre of the Jewish population and deportations to concentration camps led to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and to a major and devastating Warsaw Uprising between August and October 1944. For this Warsaw gained the title of the "Phoenix City" because it has survived many wars, conflicts and invasions throughout its long history. Most notably, the city had to be painstakingly rebuilt after the extensive damage it suffered in World War II, during which 85% of its buildings were destroyed. On 9 November 1940, the city was awarded Poland's highest military decoration for heroism, the Virtuti Militari, during the Siege of Warsaw (1939). (wikipedia)