Poznań

For centuries before Poland's conversion, Poznań was a stronghold of the Polans between the Warta and Cybina rivers, on what is now Ostrów Tumski. Mieszko I built one of his main fortresses here, his baptism in 966 may have taken place here, and the first cathedral in Poland was raised on the island, where Mieszko I and Bolesław the Brave were buried. After Bohemian forces sacked the town in 1038 the capital moved to Kraków. In 1253 Duke Przemysł I chartered a new town on the left bank under Magdeburg law, and it grew on the trade routes from Lithuania and Ruthenia to western Europe.

The population of the conurbation fell from about 20,000 around 1600 to about 6,000 around 1730, and settlers from Bamberg and the Netherlands were brought in to rebuild the devastated suburbs. Prussia took the city in 1793, and for most of the next 125 years it was German Posen, made into a fortress city with a citadel and two rings of forts. Poles formed their own societies and opened the Polish Theatre in 1875, while the Kaiser built a new imperial district around his castle. After 1918 the city returned to Poland, and the university was founded in 1919 and the International Fair in 1924.

Under Nazi rule Poznań was capital of the Wartheland; Poles were executed, expelled and used as forced labour, and most of the city's Jews were murdered. The Battle of Poznań in 1945 left much of the Old Town in ruins. In June 1956 a workers' protest at the Cegielski factory became a revolt against communist rule, crushed by the army with 67 dead according to official figures. Rebuilt, Poznań became capital of the Greater Poland province in 1999.

Poznań people, Poznaniacy, are attached to their local dialect, with its many German loanwords, which survives in phrases such as pyra for potato, and in the radio and newspaper monologues of Stary Marych, a fictional old Poznań man. The noon butting of the two goats on the town hall, a tradition since 1551, is the city's best-loved ritual, and St Martin, patron of the main street, is treated as an unofficial patron of the city: on 11 November, which is also Independence Day, a horseback St Martin leads a parade past the Imperial Castle and the whole city eats croissants.

The cultural scene is large for the city's size. Besides the Grand Theatre, the Polish Theatre and the Polish Dance Theatre, Poznań is home to a growing number of alternative theatre groups, and the Malta Festival brings theatre to the city each summer. The Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition is held every five years, and concerts by the Poznań Nightingales are especially popular. The city's rappers are mostly supporters of Lech Poznań, whose football team often plays in European competitions.

Faith and memory are part of local identity: the cathedral on Ostrów Tumski as the cradle of the Polish state, the monument to June 1956, and the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918. Rowing and canoeing on Lake Malta, the Poznań Marathon and field hockey all have strong local followings.

Poznań had about 540,000 inhabitants in 2023, the fifth-largest city in Poland, and more than a million live in its metropolitan area. The city's population has fallen since its 1990 peak as families moved to fast-growing suburbs such as Tarnowo Podgórne and Suchy Las. Around 140,000 students study at nearly 30 universities and colleges, among them Adam Mickiewicz University, and students make up a large share of the city's population.

The economy is among the strongest in Poland, often described as second only to Warsaw's. The Poznań International Fair is the country's biggest industrial fair; Volkswagen, GlaxoSmithKline, Amazon, Bridgestone and other foreign firms have plants or headquarters in and around the city; and Allegro, the energy company Enea, the Żabka convenience chain and the brewer of Lech beer are based here. Poznań has one of the highest concentrations of foreign residents in Poland, most of them workers from Ukraine.

People live in the older districts of Jeżyce, Wilda, Łazarz and Górczyn, with their tenements and neighbourhood markets, or in the large estates of prefabricated blocks built from the 1960s in Rataje, Winogrady and Piątkowo. Weekends are spent at the lakes inside the city limits — Malta, Rusałka, Strzeszyn and Kiekrz — and in the forests on its edge.

Greater Poland cooking leans on potatoes, with flour dishes, groats and sauerkraut. Pyry z gzikiem is the local signature: boiled potatoes with gzik, quark mixed with sour cream and onion or chives. Roast duck comes with apples, red cabbage and dumplings, and czernina is a soup made with duck blood.

That day belongs above all to the rogal świętomarciński, St Martin's croissant. Its filling must by law contain white poppy seeds, sugar, crumbs, egg, margarine, raisins, nuts and fruit in syrup or candied fruit, and it is coated with icing and nuts. Advertisements for it date back to 1860, and a popular legend credits a confectioner who, in 1891, answered a priest's call to feed the poor. Since 2008 the name has been protected in the European Union, and a museum on the Old Market Square is devoted to them.

Everyday eating is cheap and varied: a few surviving milk bars serve cheap meals, open-air markets operate at Jeżyce, Łazarz, Plac Bernardyński and Plac Wielkopolski, and Jeżyce has become a district of restaurants serving world cuisine. Lech beer is brewed in the city, and in summer the Old Market Square hosts a festival of Greater Poland cooking, while September brings a bread festival.