Poland was one of the few countries to emerge from WWII in such a shattered state. The country lost almost a fifth of its population, and the Nazis nearly totally devastated Warsaw, plundering or destroying much of the country's cultural assets. Even the country's border was shifted hundreds of kilometres west, prompting millions of people to flee to the so-called "recovered regions," which were once part of Germany but were now completely abandoned.

Yet out of that rubble, hope for a new world emerged. One free from the baggage of the past, which would restore the pride of a broken nation and solve the social ills that had long plagued it. Or so promised the Polish communists that took power in 1948, and, under Joseph Stalin's watchful eye, set about rebuilding the country, armed with the ideological conviction that a new society must emerge from the old.

Emblematic of this new society was a Socialist Realist city called Nowa Huta, founded in 1949 just east of Krakow and constructed over the subsequent decades. At its heart was the gargantuan Vladimir Lenin Steelworks, intended to produce more steel than the entire country was able to manufacture before the war. Nowa Huta, which literally means "New Steelworks" in Polish and was built to accommodate the steel workers, was the most ambitious project of urban planning in post-war Poland: a utopian socialist city that the rest of the nation could model itself after. Five large boulevards fanned out from the Central Square, giving Nowa Huta a distinctive pentagonal shape and emphasising its monumental character.

But Stalin's death in 1953 and subsequent de-Stalinization saw the Socialist Realist style fall out of favour. Nowa Huta's massive town hall and theatre were never built, and the remainder of the city was finished much more modestly.

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By 1973, as a consolation prize, an iconic statue of Lenin – the largest in Poland – graced the Avenue of Roses, just north of the main square.

"It was a planned city that didn't really work out the way anybody expected," said Dr Katherine Lebow, whose 2013 book Unfinished Utopia offers a detailed look into how the city was built and developed.

Despite the ideological impetus, writes Lebow, the planners themselves – some of Poland's leading architects and urban planners of the day – received no direct instructions on how the city should look. However, knowing that the city was meant to be an urban ideal, their design emphasised parks and spacious apartments, and ensured that every block had all the services it would need. Socialist Realism stressed using local styles and socialist content, seeing all forms of art as vectors of propaganda, including architecture. Cities were meant not just to be visually appealing, but to portray socialist themes and serve as a backdrop for political ritual.