Gdańsk

A settlement grew at the mouth of the Motława from the 9th century, and Mieszko I built a stronghold here in the 980s, tying the young Polish state to the Baltic trade. The town is first mentioned in 997, when Saint Adalbert baptised its people. German merchants, mostly from Lübeck, settled from around 1180, and by 1263 the town had city rights under Lübeck law. In 1308 the Teutonic Knights seized it and were accused of a massacre of its inhabitants; under their rule it was rebuilt, joined the Hanseatic League and built the Crane in 1444. In 1454 the city rebelled against the Order and placed itself under the Polish king, who granted it wide autonomy, and from 1466 it was the largest city and principal seaport of the Polish kingdom, shipping Polish grain to Western Europe.

Danzig, as its largely German-speaking population knew it, was annexed by Prussia in 1793. It was a Free City under Napoleon from 1807 to 1814 and again under the League of Nations from 1920 to 1939, with Polish rights to the port, a post office and a garrison at Westerplatte. On 1 September 1939 a German battleship opened fire on Westerplatte while the staff of the Polish Post Office held out in the city, among the first acts of the Second World War. By March 1945, when Soviet and Polish troops took the city, about 90 per cent of the historic centre lay in ruins, and the German population was expelled and replaced by Poles.

The Main City was rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s to look as it was thought to have looked before 1793. The shipyards made Gdańsk an industrial centre; in December 1970 police and troops fired on protesters, and in August 1980 the Lenin Shipyard strike gave birth to Solidarity. In January 2019 the mayor, Paweł Adamowicz, was murdered, and later that year the city received the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord.

Gdańsk sees itself as a city of freedom and of trade. Its centuries as a self-governing port, mixing German, Polish, Kashubian, Scottish, Mennonite and French Huguenot influences, show in the gabled houses of the Royal Route and the size of its churches; its Solidarity history is kept alive by the European Solidarity Centre. In 2025 the city became a UNESCO City of Literature.

St Dominic's Fair, founded in 1260, is one of Europe's oldest trade fairs and today runs for three weeks of stalls, concerts and events. The Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, opened in 2014 on the site of a 17th-century fencing school where English actors played, hosts plays of the annual Shakespeare Festival, and the Polish Baltic Philharmonic and the Baltic Opera give the city a full concert season. The astronomer Johannes Hevelius ran his observatory in the Old Town from around 1640, and the first printed summary of Copernicus's theory appeared here in 1540.

Sport is followed closely: Lechia Gdańsk, founded in 1945, plays football at a stadium that hosted matches at Euro 2012, and the city also has speedway, volleyball and ice hockey clubs. Amber is part of the local identity — Gdańsk is sometimes called the amber capital of the world — and Kashubians use their own name for the city and for its Neptune.

Gdańsk had about 489,000 registered residents at the end of 2025, making it Poland's sixth-largest city, and with Gdynia and Sopot it forms a metropolitan area of over a million. The largest districts by population include Śródmieście, Przymorze Wielkie, Chełm and the two halves of Wrzeszcz, and the city now stretches from the Vistula delta to the forested hills above Oliwa. In 2024 it received about 4.5 million tourists, many from Scandinavia and Germany.

Shipbuilding, the port, the oil refinery — the second largest in Poland — and the chemical and food industries remain important, but electronics, IT, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics are growing, and the clothing company LPP and the energy company Energa have their headquarters here. Registered unemployment was 3.6 per cent in 2021. The University of Gdańsk, the University of Technology and the Medical University bring a large student population, and the Polish Space Agency is based in the city.

The rhythm of the year is set by the sea: in summer the beaches fill and the Main City is crowded day and night, while winters are quiet and dark. Since a deadly flood in 2001 the city has built more than fifty retention reservoirs. In quality-of-life surveys Gdańsk ranks among the best places to live in Poland and Europe.

Gdańsk eats from the Baltic, as the whole coast does. Herring, śledź, is pickled, soused in oil or served in cream with onion, and smoked and fried fish come from bars along the Motława and at the beaches. The city's historic drinks are a legacy of its old trading life.

The most famous is Goldwasser, Danziger Goldwasser in German and Wódka Gdańska in Polish, a root and herbal liqueur with tiny flakes of 23-carat gold suspended in it. It was produced in Gdańsk from 1598 until 2009 and is now made elsewhere, though it is still considered the city's drink. Before the Second World War the city's own vodka was Stobbes Machandel, a juniper spirit drunk with a dried plum.

For everyday food there are milk bars and pierogi restaurants in the centre, the market hall of 1896 on Dominikański Square, and Montownia, a food hall in a former U-boat assembly plant near the shipyard. Modern Polish restaurants in the Main City and beyond have been listed in the Michelin Guide.