Warsaw Barbican

This guide to the Warsaw Barbican follows the half-moon brick fortress an Italian architect built into the city walls in the 1540s, and the single morning during the Swedish deluge in 1656 when Polish troops fought to retake it from occupying soldiers. It traces the structure's slide into obsolescence, its recycling into shops built onto its flanks, and its odd survival when the Old Town around it was leveled. Restorers later rebuilt it using seventeenth-century engravings and brick salvaged from other demolished buildings.