Wrocław

Wrocław grew up around 940 on Ostrów Tumski, an island in the Oder where the Via Regia met the Amber Road. Mieszko I of Poland took Silesia in 985, and in 1000 the town became the seat of a bishopric. The Market Square was laid out under Duke Henry the Bearded; after the Mongol invasion of 1241 the town received Magdeburg rights in 1261, and German settlers gradually became the majority, and the name Breslau came into use. In 1335 the city passed to the Bohemian crown, it joined the Hanseatic League in 1387, and in 1526 it came with Bohemia under the Habsburgs. Protestant from the Reformation, it was seized by Prussia in 1741–42 and grew in the 19th century into a railway and industrial centre; by 1871 it was the sixth-largest city in the German Empire, home to one of Germany's most important Jewish communities.

Breslau voted heavily for the Nazis in 1932, and from 1933 political opponents, Poles and Jews were persecuted; in September 1941 the city's 10,000 Jews were expelled from their homes and soon deported to concentration camps. Declared a fortress in 1944, the city was besieged by the Soviet army from February to May 1945 and surrendered only two days before the end of the war in Europe, with half of it destroyed.

The Potsdam Conference gave the city to Poland. Its German inhabitants were expelled by 1949, and Poles arrived from across the country and from the lost eastern lands, including Lwów, bringing the Ossolineum library and the Racławice Panorama. The Millennium Flood of 1997 put a third of the city under water; since then Wrocław has hosted Euro 2012 and the 2017 World Games, and was a European Capital of Culture in 2016.

Wrocław's culture is that of a city rebuilt by newcomers who made a German city their own, and of a large and youthful student population of more than 130,000. Its best-known symbols are the bronze dwarfs, which first appeared in 2005 and now number around a thousand; they commemorate the Orange Alternative, an anti-communist movement founded here in 1982 that mocked the regime with absurd street happenings. In 2016 the city was European Capital of Culture and World Book Capital, and in 2019 UNESCO named it a City of Literature.

Music and film have deep roots. The opera house dates from 1839–41, the National Forum of Music opened in 2015, and the Wratislavia Cantans festival brings oratorio and choral music each September. Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski made their first films here, the Wrocław Feature Film Studio has long operated in the city, and the New Horizons festival each July is the largest film festival in Poland. Theatre has a strong tradition too, with the Polish Theatre and the Grotowski Institute.

The city also keeps a sense of its many faiths. In the Four Denominations District a synagogue and Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox churches stand within a few streets, and the restored White Stork Synagogue hosts the Jewish community. Sport is followed keenly: Śląsk Wrocław were Polish football champions in 1977 and 2012, the Śląsk basketball team has won the national title many times, and Sparta Wrocław race speedway at the Olympic Stadium.

About 673,000 people lived in Wrocław in 2025, making it Poland's third-largest city, with around 1.25 million in the metropolitan area. It is the second- wealthiest of the large Polish cities after Warsaw, with an economy built on research and development centres, business services, banking and leasing firms, logistics and pharmaceuticals, and on factories making buses, railway carriages, household appliances and electronics, including large electronics plants just outside the city. Over six million tourists visited in 2024.

Few large cities in Poland have changed as quickly. The population has grown steadily since 2011, and the city has a large foreign population, most of them migrant workers from Ukraine. At the same time the population is ageing, and traffic is a constant complaint: drivers spend about a week a year in jams.

Life is lived around the river and its bridges and islands. Students fill the bars of the Old Town and Nadodrze, families head for Szczytnicki Park, the zoo and the riverside boulevards at weekends, and trams and buses carry much of the city to work.

Wrocław's cooking draws on Silesia, which mixes Polish, German, Czech and Austrian influences. The best-known Silesian dish is rolada, rolled beef roulade served with Silesian dumplings and red cabbage, and Lower Silesia adds śląskie niebo, "Silesian heaven", pork cooked with dried fruit and spices, and legnicka bomba, a gingerbread cake from nearby Legnica. Polish staples — pierogi, kotlet schabowy, żurek — are everywhere, and the city's milk bars serve them cheaply.

Wrocław's own fast food is knysza, a halved yeast roll, sometimes grilled, filled with cabbage, tomato, cucumber and sweetcorn under garlic sauce or mayonnaise, often with meat added; it became popular here in the 1990s. The Market Hall, built in 1906–08 near the Old Town, still sells fresh vegetables, meat and pierogi.

Beer has a long history in the city. The Breslauer Schöps beer style was created here in the 16th century, and the Świdnicka Cellar beneath the town hall has served guests since 1273. Today small breweries, cellar pubs and the Festival of Good Beer each June keep that tradition going, and small vineyards in Silesia again produce local wine.