The Katyń Museum in Warsaw has been selected as one of five projects competing in the final stage of the 2017 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

Ivan Blasi, the competition’s coordinator, told Polish Radio that the Katyń Museum is a project that makes a truly unique emotional impact.

The museum, designed by Warsaw-based BBGK Architekci studio, is a tribute to over 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviet NKVD police in the Katyń Forest, in eastern Russia, in 1940.

It is located at the site of Warsaw’s citadel, a 19th-century fortress erected on the orders of Tsar Nicolas I after the fall of the anti-Tsarist November Uprising in 1831.

The remaining four projects in the final stage of the competition are located in France, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark.

A jury will in April visit each of the five countries to evaluate the projects first hand and see how they are used by the public. The winner will be announced in Brussels on May 16.

The prize, awarded once every two years, was in 2015 awarded to the Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin, in north-western Poland.