Visiting Gdansk in Poland
Gdansk
is a beautiful, old port city on the Baltic Sea, in the north of Poland.
First settled in the ninth century, it became the thriving city of Danzig
after being conquered by the Teutonic Knights in the early fourteenth
century. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was the most important
Baltic port, and Poland's largest city.
It was here
that World War II started in September 1939, when the German battleship
Schleswig-Holstein fired on the Polish naval fort at Westerplatte. The
city was devastated during the war, but almost all of its historic center
has been painstakingly restored. It was also in Gdansk that the Soviet
Empire began to crack when Lech Walesa jumped over the shipyard fence,
organized Solidarity and proclaimed a general strike. The monuments to
the Polish defenders of Westerplatte, and to the shipyard strikers of
Solidarity are not far apart.
Gdansk used to be one of the richest port-cities in Northern Europe and
it shows - the buildings are bigger and the streets are broader than in
other medieval cities. St Mary's Church is possibly the largest brick
church in the world. Dlugi Targ is the splendid main square at the heart
of Glone Miasto, Main Town. From here you can easily walk to the huge,
fourteenth-century town hall and many other architectural gems, such as
the unique, seventeenth-century houses lining St. Mary's street. You can
stroll for hours along the picturesque old streets and river banks of the
ancient port that has been so significant in European history.
