Wola (, ) is a
district
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivision ...
in western
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, formerly the village of Wielka Wola, incorporated into Warsaw in 1916. An industrial area with traditions reaching back to the early 19th century, it underwent a transformation into an office (commercial) and residential district. Several museums are located in Wola, notably the
Warsaw Uprising Museum.
History
First mentioned in the 14th century, it became the site of the
elections
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
, from 1573 to 1764, of Polish kings by the
szlachta
The ''szlachta'' (Polish: endonym, Lithuanian: šlėkta) were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth who, as a class, had the dominating position in ...
(nobility) of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi-confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Crown of the Kingdom of ...
. The Wola district later became famous for the Polish Army's defence of Warsaw in 1794 during the
Kościuszko Uprising
The Kościuszko Uprising, also known as the Polish Uprising of 1794 and the Second Polish War, was an uprising against the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia led by Tadeusz Kościuszko in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the P ...
and in 1831 during the
November Uprising
The November Uprising (1830–31), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution,
was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in W ...
, when
Józef Sowiński and
Józef Bem
Józef Zachariasz Bem ( hu, Bem József, tr, Murat Pasha; March 14, 1794 – December 10, 1850) was a Polish engineer and general, an Ottoman pasha and a national hero of Poland and Hungary, and a figure intertwined with other European patriot ...
defended the city against
Tsarist
Tsarist autocracy (russian: царское самодержавие, transcr. ''tsarskoye samoderzhaviye''), also called Tsarism, was a form of autocracy (later absolute monarchy) specific to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states ...
forces.
During the
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...
(August–October 1944), fierce battles raged in Wola. Around 8 August, Wola was the scene of
the largest single massacre by German forces in Poland, of 40,000 to 50,000 civilians. The area was held by Polish fighters belonging to the
''Armia Krajowa''.
Neighbourhoods
Wola is divided into the neighbourhoods (
osiedle
Osiedle (Polish plural: ''osiedla'', from German ''Ansiedlung'' meaning ''settlement'') is a term used in Poland to denote a designated subdivision or neighbourhood of a city or its dzielnica, or of a town, with its own council and executive. Li ...
) of
Czyste
Czyste is one of the neighborhoods of the Wola district of Warsaw, Poland. It is limited by Wolska and Towarowa streets from the north and east and by railway lines from the west and south.
Originally Czyste was a village located right outsi ...
,
Koło,
Mirów,
Młynów, Nowolipki, Odolany,
Powązki and Ulrychów neighbourhoods, which in many cases correspond to old villages or settlements.
See also
*
Electio Viritim Monument
References
External links
*
*
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