This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

If you know anything about Central European cities, when you hear Warsaw, you think,

grey, ugly, communist.

But there is a part of Warsaw that is anything but those things, the old town.

Walking through these strict districts, it's just like any other Quaint European city.

Tour shops, horse carriage rides, church buyers.

Buildings are beautiful. But actually, it's all fake.

It's just a replica of what once was.

Like so many European cities during the Second World War, Warsaw was destroyed.

It had to be rebuilt.

Now when you walk around the reconstructed, historic part of Warsaw,

you'll find these big, last-mounted plaques on display on the sidewalk.

In-memor old paintings of these historic buildings in front of you.

The first time I noticed one of these displays on the Wieswiad street, and I was completely drawn in.

I studied the painting, and then I studied the building above.

And just like I was set up too, I thought, wow, they did an amazing job rebuilding it.

But then later, our reporter Amy Drostowska found out,

it's not quite like that.

You were entering something which is effectively a stage set intended to recreate

an atmosphere of a certain period, but you're unaware of that.

That's me Haumodowski, who was born in Warsaw.

Now he's a social anthropologist at Cambridge University.

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