Sopot

A Slavic Pomeranian stronghold stood here in the 7th century, but by the 10th it had dwindled to a fishing village. New villages grew up in the following century and passed to the Cistercian abbey at Oliwa, which owned the whole area by 1316; Sopot itself is first recorded in 1283. From the 16th century Gdańsk's patricians built summer manor houses here, and during the negotiations of the Treaty of Oliwa in 1660 the Polish king and queen stayed in one of them. Russian troops burned the village during the War of the Polish Succession, and Prussia annexed it in 1772.

The resort began in 1819, when the merchant Carl Christoph Wegner opened the first public bath. It failed, but in 1823 Jean Georg Haffner, a former French army doctor, built a new bath complex, followed by a sanatorium, a park and a 63-metre pier. The railway arrived in 1870, Emperor Wilhelm II, whose favourite spa it was, granted town rights in 1901, and the Forest Opera opened in 1909. Between the wars Sopot belonged to the Free City of Danzig; its casino became a major source of income, Wagner festivals earned it the name 'Bayreuth of the North', and in 1928 the pier reached its present length. In 1938 local Nazis burned the synagogue.

After the war began, many of Sopot's Poles, Kashubians and Jews were arrested and murdered. Soviet troops took the town on 23 March 1945, it became Sopot again, and its German inhabitants were expelled. The resort recovered quickly: Poland's first jazz festival was held here in 1956, the song festival began in 1961, and in 1999 Sopot regained its official status as a spa town.

Sopot has long been the Tricity's place for pleasure. In the early 20th century it was so popular with the Polish intelligentsia that a writer called it the extension of Warsaw to the Baltic, and after the war it remained an important centre of culture. The jazz festival of 1956 — the first in Poland, held when jazz had only just stopped being banned — was the forerunner of Warsaw's Jazz Jamboree.

The Sopot Festival, first held in 1961 and staged at the Forest Opera since 1964, is held each August, usually televised, and is described as the biggest song contest in Europe after Eurovision. The Forest Opera itself, an open-air amphitheatre of over 5,000 seats in the woods, also hosted the Wagner festivals of the interwar years and has staged concerts by international stars, among them Whitney Houston in 1999.

Sport and the seaside shape the rest of the calendar. Basketball is the town's most popular team sport, and the Ergo Arena on the boundary with Gdańsk hosted the 2014 World Indoor Athletics Championships. The pier, the beach and Monte Cassino Street, with its street artists, are the social stage of the summer, when its clubs, bars and discos stay busy late into the night.

Sopot is small: about 31,000 people lived here at the end of 2025, down from a peak of about 54,500 in 1977. It is the smallest city in Poland with the status of a county, and its property prices are the highest in the country outside Warsaw.

Tourism, the spa and the hotels drive the economy, with treatments for orthopaedic, rheumatic, heart and respiratory conditions. The insurance company Ergo Hestia is based here, and faculties of the University of Gdańsk and of SWPS University bring students. The SKM commuter railway, which stops three times in the town, ties it closely to its larger neighbours.

The year has two rhythms. In July and August the beach, the pier and Monte Cassino Street are crowded day and night, and the population is outnumbered by visitors. Out of season Sopot is a quiet town of villas, tree-lined streets and walks in the forests of the Tricity Landscape Park. In recent years five-star hotels and spa resorts have been built on the waterfront.

Like the rest of the coast, Sopot eats fish. Herring, śledź, is pickled, soused in oil or served in cream with onion, and fried cod or flounder, typical of the region, comes from the smażalnia bars of the beaches. Bar Przystań, a fish bar by the sea about a kilometre from the pier, is known for its fried fish.

Monte Cassino Street has the town's greatest choice of restaurants, cafés and bars, with tables in courtyards and on terraces in summer, and the fashionable restaurants of the resort serve everything from Polish classics to Italian food. A street market near Sopot Wyścigi station sells fresh fruit and vegetables alongside antiques, old jewellery and clothes, and small shops and stalls sell handmade amber jewellery. Polish staples — pierogi, żurek, kotlet schabowy with potatoes and cucumber salad — are easy to find, and in Gdańsk next door Goldwasser, the herbal liqueur with flakes of gold, is the historic local drink.