​​​ Lost Paradises Travels - Europe  

POLAND - Gdansk

Gdansk was a stronghold of the Teutonic Knights, and later became an influential city within the Hanseatic League during the Middle Ages. Almost destroyed in the Second World War, Gdansk was splendidly rebuilt in the aftermath as one of Europe's most beautiful port cities.

Gdańsk was the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, formed in 1980, which played a major role in bringing an end to Communist rule in Poland and helped precipitate the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The archcathedral in Oliwa is a three-nave basilica with a façade flanked by two slender towers, 46-metres tall each with sharply-edged helmets.