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 county, counties, several municipality, municipa ...
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 officia ...
,
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
The Warsaw Rising Museum ( pl, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego), in the Wola district of Warsaw, Poland, is dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The institution of the museum was established in 1983, but no construction work took place for m ...
.
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 administration, public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative ...
, from 1573 to 1764, of Polish kings by the
szlachta (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 Poland and Lithuania ru ...
. The Wola district later became famous for the Polish Army's defence of Warsaw in 1794 during the
Kościuszko Uprising and in 1831 during the
November Uprising, when
Józef Sowiński
Józef Sowiński (1777–1831) was a Polish artillery general and one of the heroes of Poland's November 1830 Uprising.
Biography
Józef Longin Sowiński was born on 15 March 1777 in Warsaw. After graduating from the famous Corps of Cadets ...
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 outside ...
,
Koło
Koło (; during the German occupation called ''Wartbrücken'' in 1940–41, ''Warthbrücken'' in 1941–45) is a town on the Warta River in central Poland with 23,101 inhabitants (2006). It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodship (since 199 ...
,
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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