One of Warsaw’s great surviving war ruins has been saved after being entered into the so-called ‘register of monuments’. Substantially damaged towards the end of WWII, the building at Waliców 14 had come to be viewed as one of the city’s quirkier landmarks on account of its crowning feature: a half-wrecked exterior wall adorned with a 1,400 sq/m mural.

However, with the area experiencing a rapid economic revival, rumors that real estate developers were circling had gathered pace. Now, though, city activists can rest easy. As one of only a handful of buildings to survive the methodical destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Mayor of Wola, Krzysztof Strzałkowski, has pledged that the brooding hulk will now be turned into an urban cultural institution with restoration work carried out under the watchful eye of the city’s conservator.