ZOO Wrocław, Wrocław

ZOO Wrocław is Poland’s oldest zoological garden, spread across thirty-three hectares near the city centre. It opened on the tenth of July, eighteen sixty-five, when Wrocław was Breslau in Prussia. The first collection was modest by today’s scale: four hundred and fifty-two animals from fifty species, welcomed with fireworks and a military band.

The zoo’s history has been anything but quiet. It closed after the First World War, reopened in nineteen twenty-seven, and suffered devastating losses during the siege of Festung Breslau in nineteen forty-five. Rebuilding followed, and the renewed zoo opened ceremonially on the eighteenth of July, nineteen forty-eight, with two hundred and twenty-four animals.

Its later fame reached homes across Poland through the television programme With a Camera Among Animals, associated with directors Hanna and Antoni Gucwiński. Today this is a vast living collection of about ten thousand five hundred animals representing roughly one thousand one hundred and thirty-two species. Its most striking modern addition is the Africarium, opened in twenty fourteen: an oceanarium devoted entirely to African wildlife, from sharks and rays to Nile crocodiles, hippos and manatees. The zoo also works on rescue and breeding programmes for endangered species.