Things to do in Gdańsk
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Green Way
Folksy blue-and-yellow space serving vegetarian and organic dishes ranging from soy cutlets to Mexican goulash. As the ultimate accolade, even nonveggies come to eat here. There’s another, more central, branch at ul Długa 11.
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Amber Museum
The Foregate is home to the Amber Museum, wherein you can marvel at the history of Baltic gold.
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St Mary's Church
Set in the middle of Main Town, St Mary's Church is believed to be the largest old brick church in the world. It is 105m long and 66m wide at the transept, and its massive squat tower is 78m high. About 25,000 people can be easily accommodated in its 5000-sq-metre (0.5-hectare) interior. It's a fascinating building to look at even from a few streets away, as its weathered red brickwork looms in a somewhat sinister manner over the much smaller, more thoroughly redecorated buildings at its feet.
The church was begun in 1343 and reached its present gigantic size in 1502. It served as the parish church for the Catholic congregation until the Reformation blew into Gdańsk, and …
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Oliwa Cathedral
An important and unusual example of ecclesiastical architecture, the Cathedral's first surprise is its façade, a striking composition of two slim octagonal Gothic towers with a central Baroque portion squeezed between them. You enter the church by going downstairs, for its floor is more than a metre below the external ground level. The interior looks extraordinarily long, mainly because of the unusual proportions of the building - the nave and chancel together are 90m long but only 8.3m wide.
At the far end of this 'tunnel' is a Baroque high altar (1688), while the previous oak-carved Renaissance altar (from 1606) is now in the left-hand transept. Opposite, in the right …
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St Bridget's Church
Set immediately behind St Catherine's is St Bridget's Church. Founded 700 years ago, the building was almost completely destroyed in 1945, and until 1970 only the walls were left standing. There's almost nothing left of the prewar furnishings within, but amber fans will be interested in seeing the spectacular 174cm-high amber monstrance depicting the tree of life and the monumental high altar, a recent construction, which comprises a record-breaking 6500kg of the stuff.
Lech Wałęsa attended Mass here when he was an unknown electrician in the nearby shipyard. With the wave of strikes in 1980 the church became a strong supporter of the dockyard workers and its priest, Henr…
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Old Town Hall
Behind the Great Mill, across a small park, is the Old Town Hall, once the seat of the Old Town council. A well-proportioned Renaissance building crowned with a high central tower typical of its Flemish provenance, it was designed at the end of the 16th century by Antonius van Opbergen, the architect later responsible for the Great Arsenal. The brick structure is delicately ornamented in stone, including the central doorway and a frieze with the shields of Poland, Prussia and Gdańsk.
The Old Town Hall now houses the Baltic Sea Culture Centre and an exhibition hall. Go upstairs to see the foyer, notable for its rich decoration, partly assembled from old burghers' houses. …
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National Museum
Located in the vaulted interiors of the former Franciscan monastery, this is among the best museums in the country. It covers the broad spectrum of Polish and international art and crafts, boasting extensive collections of paintings, woodcarvings, gold and silverware, embroidery, fabrics, porcelain, faience, wrought iron and furniture.
The National Museum has the original figure of St George from the spire of the Court of the Fraternity of St George, an assortment of huge, elaborately carved Danzig-style wardrobes (typical of the city, from where they were sent all over the country) and several beautiful ceramic tiled stoves.
The first floor is given over to paintings, wi…
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St Nicholas' Church
The main attraction of the northern part of Main Town is St Nicholas' Church, one of the oldest in town. It was built by the Dominican order on its arrival from Kraków in 1227, but only reached its final shape at the end of the 15th century. Amazingly, it was the only central church to escape damage in WWII - according to one story the attacking Russian soldiers deliberately avoided shelling it, due to Orthodox believers' high regard for St Nicholas.
Unlike most of the other Gothic churches in the city, the interior of St Nick's is very richly decorated. The magnificent late-Renaissance high altar of 1647 first catches the eye, followed by the imposing Baroque organ made…
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St Catherine's Church
The largest monument of the Old Town is St Catherine's Church, which is the oldest church in Gdańsk, begun in the 1220s. It was the parish church for the whole town until St Mary's was completed. As is common, the church evolved over centuries and only reached its final shape in the mid-15th century (save for the Baroque top to the tower, added in 1634). The vaulted Gothic interior was originally covered with frescoes, fragments of which were discovered under a layer of plaster.
Note the huge painting (11m long) depicting the entry of Christ to Jerusalem, placed under the organ loft in the left-hand aisle, and the richly carved enclosure of the baptismal font (1585) in t…
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Foregate
Just behind the Upland Gate is a large 15th-century construction known as the Foregate. It consists of the Torture House (Katownia) to the west and a high Prison Tower (Wieża Więzienna) to the east, linked to one another by two walls. When the Upland Gate was built, the Foregate lost its defensive function and was turned into a jail. The Torture House then had an extra storey added as a court room and was topped with decorative Renaissance parapets.
A gallows was built on the square to the north, where public executions of condemned foreigners were held (locals had the 'privilege' of being hanged on Długi Targ). The Foregate was used as a jail till the mid-19th century.…
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Great Arsenal
To the west of St Mary's Church, ul Piwna (Beer St) ends at the Great Arsenal. This being Gdańsk, even such an apparently prosaic building as an armoury is an architectural gem. It's the work of Antoon van Opberghen, built at the beginning of the 17th century and, like most of Gdańsk's architecture, clearly shows the influence of the Low Countries. The main eastern façade, framed within two side towers, is floridly decorated and guarded by figures of soldiers on the top.
Military motifs predominate, and the city's coat of arms guards the doorways. A small stone structure rather like a well, in the middle of the façade, is the lift that was used for hoisting heavy ammun…
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Roads to Freedom Exhibition
The Roads to Freedom exhibition is a collection of multimedia displays and artefacts illustrating Poland’s turbulent path to democracy, from the 1956 uprisings to martial law and the collapse of communism. At the time of research it was about to move from its former home in the shipyards to this location, attached to the Solidarity HQ. The exhibition is a poignant reminder of just how much has changed over the last 60 years, and of just how much dedication and sacrifice went into achieving that change. It’s well captioned in English, and is something every visitor to Gdańsk should see – it rounds out the Main Town’s Renaissance splendour with the knowledge of recent event…
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National Museum’s Department of Early Art
The National Museum’s Department of Early Art is located in the vaulted interiors of the former Franciscan monastery. Among the best museums in the country, it covers the broad spectrum of Polish and international art and crafts, boasting extensive collections of paintings, woodcarvings, gold and silverware, embroidery, fabrics, porcelain, faience, wrought iron and furniture. It has the original figure of St George from the spire of the Court of the Fraternity of St George, an assortment of huge, elaborately carved Danzig-style wardrobes (typical of the city, from where they were sent all over the country) and several beautiful ceramic tiled stoves.
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Westerplatte
Westerplatte is a long peninsula at the entrance to the harbour. When Gdańsk became a free city after WWI, Poland was permitted to maintain a post at this location, at the tip of the port zone. It served both trading and military purposes and had a garrison to protect it. WWII broke out here at dawn on 1 September 1939, when the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began shelling the Polish guard post. The garrison, which numbered just 182 men, held out for seven days before surrendering.
The site is now a memorial, with some of the ruins left as they were after the bombardment, plus a massive monument put up in memory of the defenders.
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Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers
Just in front of the shipyard gates, on Solidarity Square, the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers commemorates the workers killed in the riots of 1970. Unveiled on 16 December 1980, 10 years after the massacre, the monument is a set of three 42m-tall steel crosses, with a series of bronze bas-reliefs in their bases. The first monument in a communist regime to commemorate the regime's victims, it became an instant symbol and landmark.
One of the plates contains a fragment of a poem by late Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz: 'You who wronged a simple man/Do not feel safe. A poet remembers./You can kill one, but another is born.'
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Golden Gate
To the east of The Foregate is the Golden Gate. Designed by Abraham van den Block, son of the decorator of the Upland Gate, and built in 1612, it's a sort of triumphal arch ornamented with a double-storey colonnade and topped with eight allegorical statues. Today's figures are postwar copies of the 1648 originals.
The four figures on the side of the Prison Tower represent Peace, Liberty, Wealth and Fame, for which Gdańsk was always struggling to achieve against foreign powers (sometimes including the Polish kings). The sculptures on the opposite side symbolise the burghers' virtues: Wisdom, Piety, Justice and Concord.
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Upland Gate
The traditional entry point for kings was Upland Gate, at the western end of the Royal Way. It was built in 1574 as part of the new fortifications, which were constructed outside the city's medieval walls to strengthen the system. Authorities weren't happy with the original structure, so in 1586 they commissioned Flemish artist, Willem van den Block, to embellish it, covering it with sandstone slabs and ornamenting it with 3 coats of arms: Prussia (unicorns), Poland (angels) and Gdańsk (lions).
You'll find Gdańsk's shield, invariably featuring heraldic lions, on countless public buildings throughout the city.
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Town Hall
As you reach the eastern end of ul Długa, look up to the pinnacle of the Town Hall. This tall slim tower, the highest in Gdańsk (81.5m), has a life-sized gilded figure of King Zygmunt II August on top - a reward for his generosity in granting privileges to the city. The town hall has both Gothic and Renaissance elements. The first building was reputedly put up in the 1330s, but it grew and changed until the end of the 16th century.
In 1945 it was almost completely burnt out and the authorities were on the point of demolishing the ruin, which was eventually saved thanks to local protests.
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Neptune Fountain
According to legend the Neptune Fountain, next to the town hall, once gushed forth with the trademark Gdańsk liqueur, Goldwasser. As the story goes, it spurted out of the trident one merry night and Neptune found himself endangered by crowds of drunken locals. Perhaps that's why in 1634 the fountain was fenced off with a wrought-iron barrier. The bronze statue was the work of another Flemish artist, Peter Husen; it was made between 1606 and 1613 and is the oldest secular monument in Poland.
A menagerie of stone sea creatures was added in the 1750s during the restoration of the fountain
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Gdańsk Crane
Built in the mid-15th century as the biggest double-towered gate on the waterfront, it also served to move heavy cargoes directly onto or off the vessels. For this purpose two large wheels – 5m in diameter – were installed as a hoist with a rope wound around the axle; it was put in motion by people ‘walking’ along the inner circumference of the wheels as a treadmill. It could hoist loads of up to 2000kg, making it the biggest crane in medieval Europe. At the beginning of the 17th century another set of wheels was added higher up, for installing masts.
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ul Mariacka
The tiny ul Grząska will take you to ul Mariacka, the most atmospheric of all the streets in Gdańsk and unique in Poland. It was reconstructed after the war, almost from the ground up, with the utmost piety on the basis of old documents and illustrations, and every detail found in the rubble was incorporated. It looks amazingly authentic. It's the only street with a complete row of terraces, which gives it enormous charm, and is a trendy place lined with shops selling amber jewellery.
You'll also find some of the best stalls here during the Dominican Fair.
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Bread Gate
In medieval times, the parallel east-west streets of the Main Town all had defensive gates at their riverfront ends. Some of them still exist, though most were altered in later periods. Walking north along Długie Pobrzeże (literally, Long Waterfront), you first get to the Bread Gate, at the end of ul Chlebnicka. It was built around 1450, still under the Teutonic Order, as shown by the original city coat of arms consisting of two crosses.
The crown was added by King Kazimierz Jagiellończyk in 1457, when Gdańsk was incorporated into the kingdom.
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Guardhouse No 1
WWII broke out here at dawn on 1 September 1939, when the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began shelling the Polish guard post. The garrison, which numbered just 182 men, held out for seven days before surrendering. The site is now a memorial, with some of the ruins left as they were after the bombardment, plus a massive monument put up in memory of the defenders. The surviving Guardhouse No 1 houses a small exhibition related to the event, including a model of the battle labelled in English.
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Church of the Holy Trinity
Formerly belonging to the Franciscan monastery, the Church of the Holy Trinity was built at the end of the 15th century, when the Gothic style had already reached its late decorative stage. After St Mary's Church it's the largest in town, with a spacious and lofty whitewashed interior topped with a superb, netlike vault. Note the high altar's assembly of panels from triptychs of different origins, the old tombstones paving the floor, and the spidery Baroque chandeliers from the mid-17th century.
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Royal Chapel
Just to the north and completely overshadowed by St Mary's Church, sits the small Royal Chapel, squeezed between two houses. The only Baroque church in old Gdańsk, it was built between 1678 and 1681 to fulfil the last will of the primate of Poland of the time, Andrzej Olszowski. It was designed by famous royal architect Tylman van Gameren. Its façade is its more attractive feature, and bears the coats of arms of Poland, Lithuania and King Jan III Sobieski (the founder of the chapel).
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