A Plan of the City of Warsaw

Town plan of Warsaw with a key indicating places of interest in the city including Palaces, Barracks, Arsenals, Hospitals and Churchs. Warsaw became the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1596, due to its location between Krak�w and Vilnius and its proximity to Gda�sk, a city on the Baltic coastline which was under frequent attack by the Swedes. During the seventeenth century, several private districts called jurydyka were established which were governed independently from the main town and were subject to their own laws. One of these jurydykas was Praga, which can be seen at the top of this plan on the northeast side of the river. The first permanent bridge across the Vistula, built in 1576 was destroyed in 1603 by an ice floe and until 1775, there was no permanent connection between Warsaw and Praga. From 1569, Poland and Lithuania were united in a union called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and enjoyed several decades of prosperity before entering a period of economic, political and military decline. Its increasing weakness in the late eighteenth century led to the progressive partitioning of the union by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians in between 1772 and 1795, which resulted in the elimination of an independent Poland for the next 123 years.