Gdańsk, Pomerania & the Baltic Coast

The coast was settled by West Slavic Pomeranians, and Gdańsk appears as a Polish stronghold in 997. In 1308 the Teutonic Knights seized Gdańsk, and from 1309 their Grand Master ruled from Malbork, the brick fortress on the Nogat. The Order had founded Toruń in 1233, and its towns grew rich in the Hanseatic League. When the Prussian towns rebelled, the Thirteen Years' War ended in 1466 with the Peace of Toruń, which put Gdańsk, Toruń and Malbork under the Polish crown as Royal Prussia. Gdańsk became the Commonwealth's great grain port, with a German-speaking burgher elite and a golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Partitions gave the region to Prussia. After 1918, Poland regained a strip of coast and built Gdynia as its own port, while Gdańsk became the Free City of Danzig under the League of Nations. The Second World War began here on 1 September 1939 with the German attack on the Westerplatte depot. West Pomerania and Szczecin, long ruled by Pomeranian dukes, then Sweden and from 1720 Prussia, remained German until 1945, when they passed to Poland and their German population was expelled.

Protest defined the post-war coast. Workers were shot in Gdańsk, Gdynia and Szczecin in December 1970, and in August 1980 the strike at Gdańsk's Lenin Shipyard, led by Lech Wałęsa, gave birth to Solidarity.

The Kashubians, a West Slavic people of the hills and lakes west of Gdańsk, are the region's most distinct group. Kashubian is recognised in Polish law as a regional language, with bilingual signs in many villages, and Kashubian embroidery and pottery mark the culture. Many Kashubians fought to keep their identity under both Prussian and Polish rule.

Elsewhere the population is largely post-war. Gdańsk and Szczecin were resettled by Poles from the east and centre, while Gdynia's people were pioneers of the 1920s. The coastal cities share a maritime culture of shipyards, sailing and seafarers, and a strong liberal, civic streak rooted in the Solidarity years.

Gdańsk's St Dominic's Fair, held since 1260, is one of Europe's oldest trade fairs and fills the old town with stalls each summer. Toruń has a university named after Copernicus, and the gingerbread tradition goes back to the Middle Ages. Across Kuyavia and the Vistula towns, the Gothic brick churches and town halls of the Teutonic era give the landscape its look, and the Żuławy delta keeps arcaded wooden houses built by Mennonite settlers.

Gdańsk has about 470,000 people and forms the Tricity with Gdynia, about 240,000, and Sopot, about 30,000 — together a metropolitan area of over a million. Szczecin is the largest city of the west, Bydgoszcz around 330,000 and Toruń about 195,000.

Ports and shipbuilding remain important: Gdańsk's port has become one of the Baltic's largest, with Poland's largest container terminal, Gdynia handles ferries and cruise ships, and Szczecin–Świnoujście has a large LNG terminal. IT and business-services firms, universities and tourism now employ more people than the shipyards.

Summer changes everything on the coast, as resorts from Międzyzdroje to Hel fill with Polish families; off-season the fishing villages are very quiet. Current issues include the cost of housing in the Tricity, construction of Poland's first nuclear power station in Pomerania, offshore wind farms in the Baltic, and new investments at Gdańsk's port.

The coast eats fish. Herring (śledź) is pickled, soused in oil or served in cream with onion; smoked flounder, cod, eel and sprats are sold from smokehouses along the beaches; and fried fish with chips comes from the smażalnia bars of every resort.

Gdańsk's historic liqueur is Goldwasser, a herbal spirit with flakes of gold leaf, and the city's merchants imported the spices that made the region famous for sweets. Toruń's piernik, gingerbread made with honey and spices and shaped in carved moulds, has been baked since the Middle Ages.

Kashubia has its own table: potato dishes, goose and duck from the lake farms, and summer strawberries. Szczecin claims two popular snacks: pasztecik szczeciński, a deep-fried yeast roll filled with meat, eaten with a cup of barszcz, and paprykarz szczeciński, a tinned spread of fish, rice and tomato paste invented in the 1960s.

Gdańsk's Main Town was rebuilt after 1945 along the Royal Way — the Long Street and Long Market, Neptune's Fountain and Artus Court — to the medieval crane on the Motława. St Mary's Church is one of the largest brick churches in the world, and the European Solidarity Centre, the Museum of the Second World War, Westerplatte and the organ of Oliwa Cathedral complete the city. Sopot has its long wooden pier and Monte Cassino promenade; Gdynia has museum ships, the Emigration Museum and a modernist centre.

To the south-east, Malbork Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest castle in the world by land area, and the Vistula leads to Toruń, whose UNESCO-listed medieval town includes Copernicus's house and a leaning tower; Chełmno's walls, the reconstructed Iron Age settlement at Biskupin and the spa at Ciechocinek are nearby.

The Hel peninsula stretches about 35 kilometres into the sea from Władysławowo, with the fishing town of Hel at its tip. West along the coast, Słowiński National Park near Łeba has moving dunes up to about 30 metres high, and Wolin National Park has cliffs above Międzyzdroje. Szczecin has its Castle of the Pomeranian Dukes, the Chrobry Embankment above the Oder and a prize-winning modern Philharmonic.