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What does a resident of Wrocław see when looking out of his window onto the street? A few historic tenement houses and churches, most of them post-war housing estates, better or worse fitted into the urban fabric and allowing you to enjoy the greenery of trees or, as often happens, the view of dinner cooked by your neighbour. The question immediately arises as to why there is so little of the pre-war city in Wrocław. The first answer that comes to mind is the war, or rather its decline, when the city, previously spared by air raids, became a fortress and shared the fate of its "steadfast defenders". But was it really just war and was nothing really possible to do for pre-war Wrocław? Professor Tomasz Głowiński answers these questions in his speech delivered during "Friday with History" (31 March 2023) entitled "Wrocław 1945-1949. First attempts to rebuild the city". It vividly describes the history of the city's first post-war inhabitants, the problems they struggled with, the sea of rubble they had to live among and clean up, but also the political pressures that sometimes forced the demolition of surviving buildings to rebuild Warsaw. So, could more have been done to save the city's architectural past? Those seeking an answer to this question are invited to watch Professor Głowiński's lecture.