'architecture' - tagged features

We Head to the southern Polish city of Krakow, for a tour of the Kazimierz district, a Jewish quarter from late-medieval times... Most of the sixty thousand Jews who lived there before World War Two were murdered by the Nazis. Small wonder that the city’s Jewish past was in danger of being consigned to oblivion. 

Between the two world wars, Bucharest was dubbed little Paris, with its French inspired architecture. But during the communist era entire neighborhoods of the Romanian capital were demolished to make room for blocks of flats. The communists are now gone but it seems that what's left of Bucharest's architectural legacy is now threatened by runaway capitalism. Radio Romania's Iulian Muresan lives in a city that's changing fast. 

In less than one month Bucharest will be the easternmost capital of the European Union. In the 17 years since the fall of communism the city has gotten a facelift, but the traces of the past are still visible everywhere. Iulian Muresan from Radio Romania International caught up with a team of Romanian and British architects, sociologists and artists and reports on their efforts to give Bucharest a new identity. 

In the Second World War the Polish capital, Warsaw was all but flattened and rebuilding the Old Town was the largest renovation project in the history of Europe. Now the town of Lodz has just started the next biggest project of this kind. Lodz is Poland's second largest city but isn't usually on tourists' to-do lists. But it might be now. The town's Manufaktura complex has had a huge makeover.