Things to do
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Mariacka Street
Mariacka Street is a short lane in the Main Town, lying below St Mary's Basilica and lined with amber shops and cafés. It is free to walk at any hour, and half an hour covers it with time to look in the shop windows. The lane makes an easy link between the basilica and the river, and Gotyk House stands along it.
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Artus Court
Inside Artus Court, the merchants' hall of the 14th century on the Long Market, stands a tiled stove eleven metres tall. The court now opens as a museum on the Royal Way, a few steps from the Main Town Hall. The great hall shuts on scattered days for events, several of them in October, so check the opening calendar before planning a visit.
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Brzeźno Beach
Tram line 3 runs to its terminus at Brzeźno Dom Zdrojowy from Podwale Grodzkie, beside the main station, so the beach is one ride from the centre. The sand has a pier, and a long shore walk leads west to Jelitkowo and on towards Sopot. The beach is free, and a swim or the walk takes an afternoon.
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Granary Island
Brick granaries that once held the port's grain stand on this island across the Motława from the Main Town, and many are now hotels, bars and cafés. In about ten years the island went from ruins to a quarter of new hotels. It is open to walk at any hour with no ticket, a few minutes across the bridges from the Long Market.
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Main Town Hall
Halfway down the Royal Way, the Renaissance town hall stands over the Long Market with a tall tower and an observatory. The building is a ticketed museum, and the climb to the tower and roof goes ahead only in fair weather, so keep a clear day for it. Allow about an hour for the rooms and the climb.
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National Maritime Museum
The museum's main building occupies the old granaries on Ołowianka Island, reached across a pedestrian drawbridge from the waterfront. The same museum runs the Żuraw crane and the steamship SS Sołdek, moored on the island, which takes its own ticket to board. The main building opens Tuesday to Sunday, only from 13:00 on Wednesdays, and two hours covers it with the ship.
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Oliwa Park
Oliwa Park is the reason to ride the tram to north Gdańsk: with the cathedral beside it, the old abbots' garden forms a historic ensemble known well beyond Poland.
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St. Mary's Church
Gdańsk's great brick basilica puts you under star vaults 30 metres high and in front of a fifteenth-century astronomical clock whose figures still parade just before noon. Then you climb the tower and see the whole Old Town below.
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Gdańsk Christmas Market
Come on a weekday and arrive at noon, when the stalls open and the food queues are short, then stay on until the lights come on at dusk. Friday and Saturday evenings are the most crowded of the week.
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Malbork Castle
From 1309 the headquarters of the Teutonic Knights, Malbork is by land area the largest castle in the world, with three walled enclosures of red brick above the river Nogat. Half of it was destroyed in 1945 and rebuilt over decades. The visit takes three to four hours with an audio guide through refectories, chapels and the grand master's palace, and trains from Gdańsk take under an hour.
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Amber Museum
Baltic amber fills the city museum inside the Great Mill, a Gothic brick watermill on the Radunia canal, from raw nuggets holding trapped insects to carved caskets, altars and modern jewellery. Labels explain how to tell real amber from pressed or plastic copies, which helps before shopping on Mariacka Street. Entry is free on Mondays, and the museum is closed on Tuesdays.
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European Solidarity Centre
Beside the historic gate of the Lenin Shipyard, a rust-coloured steel building marks where striking workers led by the electrician Lech Wałęsa won the right to a free trade union in August 1980. The exhibition follows the movement through martial law to the elections of 1989, with the plywood boards listing the strikers' twenty-one demands. Outside stands the monument to the shipyard workers shot in 1970.
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Gdańsk Market Hall
In a market hall of the late 19th century beside the Radunia Canal, food stalls fill the main floor close to the Old Town. On the lower level the excavated ruins of a Romanesque church can be seen beneath the stalls. Entry is free and walk-in, and forty minutes covers lunch at a stall and a look at the ruins.
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Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre
Seeing a play here puts you under the only theatre roof in the world that opens over the audience, in a wooden hall that recreates Gdańsk's own Elizabethan playhouse.
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Gotyk House
On Mariacka Street, rooms in this period house look out at St Mary's Basilica and, after dark, at the tower of the Main Town Hall. The hotel stands in the heart of the Main Town, a few minutes on foot from the Long Market and the river. Ask for one of the rooms facing the basilica when booking.
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Gradowa Hill
Gradowa Hill carries a large cross and a 19th-century fort at the edge of the centre, and its slopes look out over the towers of the city. The fort holds Hevelianum, a hands-on science and history centre that closes on Mondays. The walk up is free, the European Solidarity Centre is about 20 minutes away on foot, and the view is best near sunset.
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Hel Peninsula
The Hel spit curls out from the mainland into the Baltic, with open sea on its north shore and the calm Bay of Puck on the south, and beaches run almost unbroken along it. At the tip the fishing port of Hel has a seal centre and a lighthouse. Summer ferries and the train from Gdynia reach it, and the single road along the spit jams on hot weekends.
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Hotel Gdańsk Boutique
Stay here to sleep in a 17th-century granary on the Motława, then step out of the door and into Gdańsk's Old Town within minutes.
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Hotel Podewils
Across the water from the Żuraw crane, Hotel Podewils occupies a baroque merchant's house of 1728 on the Motława quay, with the old town skyline in view. Its few rooms are furnished with antiques, and the restaurant keeps a rococo interior with a summer terrace on the river. With so few rooms it fills early, so booking well ahead is essential.
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Long Market
From the Golden Gate to the Green Gate on the river, the Long Market is the ceremonial street of the old merchant city, along which Polish kings made their entries. Narrow houses with ornate gables and stone terraces line both sides, nearly all rebuilt from ruins after 1945. The bronze Neptune fountain of 1633 stands before Artus Court, the merchants' hall.
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Museum of the Second World War
Fourteen metres underground, beneath a tilted tower of red concrete opened in 2017, the exhibition tells the war chiefly through civilians across occupied Europe and Asia. A reconstructed prewar street appears early in the route and returns later, bombed. The scale is large and the content heavy, so allow three hours at least, and expect Tuesdays to be busy because entry is free.
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Oliwa Cathedral
Known for a rococo organ of several thousand pipes, completed in 1788, the long and narrow Cistercian abbey church stands in a leafy northern suburb. When the organ plays, carved angels on the case blow trumpets and ring bells, and stars and suns turn. Twenty-minute recitals run several times a day, and in July and August they start every hour from ten to three except on Sundays.
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Sobieszewo Island
Out in the Vistula delta, Sobieszewo Island lies well outside the centre of the city. The F6 water tram reaches it by way of the National Sailing Centre, and the boat ride is a large part of the outing. The boat runs only in season, so check the F6 timetable on the waterfront before setting out.
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Uphagen House
Free on Mondays from ten until four, Uphagen House is a merchant's house in the Old Town kept as a museum. From Tuesday to Sunday it opens from ten until six with a ticket. Three quarters of an hour covers the rooms, and the house closes for a few days at the turn of November into December.
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Westerplatte
At dawn on 1 September 1939 a German battleship opened fire on the small Polish garrison holding this wooded peninsula at the harbour mouth, and some two hundred soldiers held out for seven days. Ruined barracks and guardhouses remain among the trees below a tall granite monument, and the exhibition in the old power station is closed on Mondays. Bus 106 runs out every day from the Museum of the Second World War stop.
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Wisłoujście Fortress
At the mouth of the Vistula in Nowy Port, Wisłoujście Fortress stands close to the old lighthouse, on the harbour channel well away from the Main Town. Visitors walk round the fort at their own pace. City buses or a taxi reach it by way of Nowy Port, so plan it as a separate outing from the centre.
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Żuraw
For centuries the biggest port crane in Europe, the timber crane in this fortified water gate on the Motława quay was built in the 1440s. Men walking inside two pairs of giant treadwheels could lift loads of several tonnes or step a ship's mast. Burned in 1945 and reconstructed, it belongs to the National Maritime Museum.
