Poland

Poland's entries turn on what was destroyed and what was decided afterwards. Warsaw's old town is a reconstruction from eighteenth-century paintings, listed by UNESCO as an act of will rather than as authentic fabric; Gdańsk rebuilt its merchant façades the same way. Kraków and Toruń came through intact, which is why the difference is legible. Zamość is the outlier: an ideal Renaissance city built at once by one nobleman in 1580.