Gdańsk entered the record as Gyddanyzc the year Adalbert baptized it
Poland's sixth-largest city and chief Baltic port anchors the Tricity with Gdynia and Sopot—about 1.5 million people together. Saint Adalbert's vita, written in 999, places urbs Gyddanyzc on the Polish shore in 997. From Piast stronghold to Hanse hub to Solidarity's birthplace, the Motława mouth kept rewriting Europe.
Bronze and Iron Age amber trade already marked the Amber Road here. Archaeology after wartime ruin exposed settlement levels from about 980 to 1308; Mieszko I raised a stronghold in the 980s to link Piast Poland with Baltic routes. The name likely tracks the Motława, once called Gdania, or a Proto-Slavic wet root plus -sk. Spellings marched from Kdanzk and Danceke toward German Danzig as Lübeck merchants settled under Lübeck law by 1263.
Teutonic Knights seized the town in 1308 amid a Brandenburg clash; later estimates of dead range from dozens of knights plus roughly a thousand commoners down to sixty–one hundred fifty, fuel for a papal lawsuit. The Order rebuilt a German-speaking Danzig, joined the Hansa in 1358, and held the port as a Polish Crown grant after the 1343 Treaty of Kalisz. Grain and timber floated down the Vistula until partitions handed the city to Prussia in 1793.
Free-city intervals (1807–14, 1920–39) ended when Westerplatte fighting on 1 September 1939 opened World War II. Post-1945 border shifts, German flight, and Polish resettlement remade the population; the 1980s shipyard birthed Solidarity. Today some 486,492 residents visit landmarks such as St. Mary's—one of the world's largest brick churches—and St. Dominic's Fair, traced to 1260. In 2024 tourists numbered 4.5 million; 2025 brought UNESCO City of Literature status.
Source: Gdańsk
