Dreams of the Olympic Warsaw: Uncompleted projects of Olympic infrastructure in the capital of Poland in the 20th century - an outline

Abstract

The aim of this study is to attempt to synthetically describe the activities performed in Warsaw in order to prepare the city for the organisation of the summer Olympic Games. Dreams and plans for the capital of Poland to become an Olympic city were presented just after regaining the independence and the establisment of Polish Olympic Committee in the early 1920s, under the rule of the charismatic city mayor Stefan Starzyński in 1930s, during the capital’s restoration after WWII destruction in 1940s, and after the political transformation in 1990s. However, none of them has been achieved due to logistical, economic and political difficulties. In the article, it is attempted to recap and compare these unfulfilled investment plans based on archival, printed, press and memoiristic sources.