The market town of Cheltenham would never be the same again after its mineral springs were discovered in the 1700s. This triggered a hundred-year wave of development that peaked in the Regency era in the first decades of the 19th century. With Neoclassical spa facilities, terraces of stuccoed townhouses and opulent gardens, Cheltenham has been …
You can’t bring up Częstochowa without first mentioning the Jasna Góra Monastery, the most visited Marian sanctuary in Poland and a site of immeasurable national importance. The monastery chapel contains the venerated 14th-century Black Madonna icon, which brings in millions of pilgrims a year from all over the world. Częstochowa is completely oriented around this …
A city at the far eastern boundary of the European Union, Białystok is under 60 kilometres from the border with Belarus. The centre of this former textile city is compact and walkable, and was planned in the early 18th century by Jan Klemens Branicki. He was one of the richest men in Poland at the …
On the Brda and Vistula Rivers in northern Poland, Bydgoszcz is a place whose fortunes have been shaped by water. When the Bydgoszcz Canal opened in the 1770s it put the city on a Europe-wide network of waterways extending west all the way to Rotterdam. The most picturesque spot in Bydgoszcz is Mill Island at …
As a mining city, Katowice’s sudden growth in the 19th century was fuelled by its rich coal seams. The plush tenement houses of the Śródmieście district were all funded by this new wealth. But there are also innovative worker settlements like Nikiszowiec and Giszowiec, where miners and their families had a high quality of life, …
The greatest empire in Renaissance Europe was born in Lublin in Lesser Poland in 1569. The Union of Lublin created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Lublin, on the old road from Kraków to Vilnius, was the place where the document was signed. Lublin’s Old Town is guarded by two gates and has a Renaissance castle in …
In West Pomerania, the city of Szczecin is a major seaport that first grew rich from trade on the Baltic in the Middle Ages. Known as Stettin in German, it’s a city that has passed between opposing powers for hundreds of years. The Dukes of Pomerania were replaced by the Swedes, followed by the Prussian …
On Gdańsk Bay, Gdynia is a port city that sprouted in the interwar years of the 20th century. With white sandy beaches and coastal forest it quickly became a holiday resort, but was also Poland’s embarkation point for emigrants to America. A new museum on this delicate topic and the Polish diaspora opened in 2015, …
Poland’s largest port flourished during Medieval times as a merchant city trading Baltic amber. In the 20th century events took place in Gdańsk that would affect the course of world history. On 1 September 1939 the Wehrmacht launched their Invasion of Poland at the Westerplatte peninsula north of the city. And just over four decades …
A city with its own identity, dialect and customs, Poznań in the Greater Poland region is where Catholicism first gained a foothold on Polish soil. Poland’s first diocese was founded here on the Cathedral island in the 10th century by the nation’s first king. This river island sits on the shoulder of the Renaissance Old …