Is Europe’s stubby skyline a sign of low ambition?

Atop an ordinary slab of office building in downtown Warsaw juts what at first might look like yet another example of architectural one-upmanship. But the 80-metre steel spire pointing out of the newish Varso tower is not there merely to provide bragging rights to the building’s owners. For over six decades until Varso was completed in 2022, the tallest building in Poland had been a monumental “gift” from Joseph Stalin, a tribute to unrequited communist amity completed two years after the dictator’s death in 1953. Without its pointy appendage the new edifice—a tribute to capitalism just one city block away from the enduring Soviet monolith—would have fallen a few centimetres short. Standing proud at 310 metres including its spire, Varso thus holds the title of tallest occupied building not just in the city but in the whole EU.