The second half of the 19th century saw a steady rate of urban development and industrialisation, including a railway linking Warsaw with Vienna and St Petersburg.
After WWI, Warsaw was reinstated as the capital of independent Poland and within 20 years made considerable advances in the fields of industry, education, science and culture. The population increased from about 750,000 in 1918 to nearly 1.3 million in 1939, of whom 380,000 were Jewish.
Nazi bombs began to fall on 1 September 1939 and a week later the city was besieged. Despite brave resistance, Warsaw fell to the enemy on 28 September. This, however, turned out to be only the beginning of the tragedy. The five-year Nazi occupation, marked by constant arrests, executions and deportations, triggered two acts of heroic armed resistance, both cruelly crushed.
The first was the Ghetto Uprising in April 1943, when heavily outnumbered and almost unarmed Jewish civilians fought fiercely for almost a month against overwhelming Nazi forces. The second was the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 which hoped to liberate the capital and set up an independent government before the arrival of the Red Army (which was already camped on the eastern bank of the Vistula River). Street fighting began on 1 August, but after 63 days the insurgents were forced to capitulate. For the next three months the Nazis methodically razed the city to the ground. Only on 17 January 1945 did Soviet forces cross the river to 'liberate' Warsaw.
About 85% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed and 800,000 people - more than half of the city's pre-war population - perished. No other Polish city suffered such immense loss of life or such devastation in the war. Given the level of destruction, there were suggestions that the capital should be moved elsewhere, but instead it was decided to repair the pre-war urban fabric. According to the plan, the most valuable historic monuments, most notably the Old Town, would be restored to their previous appearance based on original drawings and photographs.
The authorities also had to build from scratch a whole new city capable of providing housing and services to its inhabitants. This communist legacy was less impressive. The city centre was, until recently, a blend of bunker-like Stalinist structures and equally dull edifices of a later era, while the outer suburbs, home to the majority of Warsaw's inhabitants, were composed almost exclusively of anonymous prefabricated concrete blocks.

With the arrival of a market economy in 1989, the face of Warsaw has undergone rapid change. Newly constructed steel-and-glass towers are increasingly breaking the monotony of the grey landscape, shop windows showcase colourful, innovative designs and colour, and the city outskirts are steadily filling up with villas and family houses on a much more human scale than the monstrous slabs of yesteryear.