Gdańsk Old Town — mills, a carillon and a confusing name

Old Town is not the Main Town

Gdańsk did not grow as one city but as several side by side, each with its own charter and council. Say "old town" and most visitors picture Long Market, the Crane and Mariacka Street — but that is the Main Town. The Old Town is a separate quarter to the north of it, beyond the street called Podwale Staromiejskie.

Its edges are easy to trace: Podwale Staromiejskie and the Main Town to the south, the Motława to the south-east, Nowe Ogrody and Grodzisko to the west, and the Young Town with the shipyard grounds to the north. The Radunia Canal, cut in the fourteenth century to link the Radunia with the Motława, runs through the middle and forms a small island.

Historians pick out three older areas within the quarter, each with its own name: Osiek, a fishing and craft settlement, Zamczysko, the site of the Teutonic castle, and the surroundings of the Oliwa Gate. Walking today's streets you would not spot them without a map, but the names turn up on plaques and tram stops.

A charter, a massacre and a demotion

This is the oldest part of Gdańsk to have been granted city rights. A fortified settlement stood here in the tenth century, the stronghold dates from around 1050, and the town was chartered under Lübeck law in 1223, with rights granted again before 1263.

In 1308 the Teutonic Order destroyed and burned this part of the city, the episode known as the Gdańsk massacre. The Old Town lost its municipal status and for nearly seventy years answered directly to the Teutonic commander. It was chartered afresh, now under Chełmno law, in 1377.

It never regained its former standing, because the Main Town had taken over in the meantime. In 1433 the Old Town was given a palisade and a ditch; in 1454 a privilege subordinated it to the Main Town while leaving it some autonomy; and the masonry defences on the west and north were built between 1476 and 1493 under the neighbour's supervision and at the neighbour's expense. On the southern side, facing the Main Town, nothing was fortified at all.

The figures show the change: just under four thousand people lived here in 1495, over thirty-one thousand in 1880 and close to thirty-eight thousand by 1917 — a craftsmen's quarter had become a densely built district of a major port.

The Great Mill and the Small Mill

The quarter's most distinctive building stands on the island between the arms of the Radunia Canal. The Teutonic Knights put up the Great Mill around 1350, and it is first recorded in 1364. It is reckoned among the largest industrial buildings of medieval Europe, and it milled grain until the Second World War.

The building was damaged in 1945, rebuilt between 1962 and 1965, and then spent decades in search of a purpose. Since 2021 it has housed the Amber Museum, moved here from the Gothic barbican complex; the new premises give the display roughly a thousand square metres.

A short walk away on the same canal stands the Gothic Small Mill, of about 1400 — easy to miss, but together with its larger neighbour it explains the local economy: everything depended on the force of water brought here by canal from the Radunia.

Fifty bells at St Catherine's

St Catherine's is the oldest parish church in the Old Town, built between 1227 and 1239 under the patronage of the dukes of Pomerelia and enlarged after 1379. It was Protestant from 1555 to 1945, which left the interior with a plainness you can still feel.

The tower stands 76 metres high; Jacob van den Block designed its Baroque cap in 1634, and it was reconstructed between 1974 and 1979. The church has had a hard run of it: lightning burned the tower on 3 July 1905, fire in 1945 destroyed the high altar of 1613 along with the roofs and part of the vaulting, and on 22 May 2006 another major blaze brought the roof down, though the tower was saved and the fittings carried out.

The carillon in the tower is the real speciality. The first was hung in 1575; the present instrument of fifty bells weighing over seventeen tonnes was installed in 1989, extended in 1998, and completed in 2013 with a fiftieth bell named Katarzyna. The tower also holds the Museum of Tower Clocks, a branch of the Museum of Gdańsk, and since 2011 a pulsar clock, the only one of its kind, has been running on the elevation.

Inside, look for the tombstone of Johannes Hevelius, dated 1659. The astronomer lived and made his observations in this very quarter, and one of the church's piers now carries his name. Next door stands St Bridget's basilica, the parish to which St Catherine's belongs.

A town hall with original interiors

The Old Town Hall on Korzenna Street was built between 1587 and 1595 to a design by Anthonis van Obbergen, an architect from the Low Countries. It is Dutch Mannerism in its purest form: brick, stone surrounds and a turret that guidebooks compare to Kronborg Castle at Elsinore.

What matters most, though, is what you cannot see. The building is one of the few monuments in Gdańsk that escaped 1945 without catastrophic damage, so its interiors are original — ceilings and paintings that in the Main Town had to be reconstructed. The Baltic Sea Culture Centre is based here now, so you get inside for concerts, exhibitions and events.

A few steps on, at Elżbietańska Street, stands the House of the Abbots of Pelplin, a townhouse in the same Mannerist spirit that once served as the city residence of the Cistercians from Pelplin. On nearby Targ Drzewny stands an equestrian monument to King John III Sobieski.

What the war made of the quarter

The siege of 1945 hit the Old Town hard, and reconstruction treated it differently from the Main Town. There the historic frontages were recreated; here modern buildings went up instead, with shops, offices and shopping centres added from the 1980s onwards. The result is a patchwork — a medieval mill, a Renaissance town hall and a Gothic church standing among blocks from the second half of the twentieth century.

For a visitor that has its advantages. The monuments here are genuine rather than rebuilt, and between them lies an ordinary working city of offices, a railway station and tram stops. After Long Market you come back to a different scale and a much thinner crowd, and all of it a quarter of an hour's walk away.

Getting there

• By train — Gdańsk Główny station, an early twentieth-century building, sits on the western edge of the quarter, a few minutes' walk from the Great Mill.
• By tram — lines running along Podwale Staromiejskie and around the main station drop you in the middle of the quarter.
• On foot from the Main Town — from Long Market simply head north across Podwale Staromiejskie, about fifteen minutes.
• By car — this is dense city centre with traffic restrictions, so it is easier to park on the fringe of the centre and come in by tram.

Worth knowing

Two hours covers the main points; add the Amber Museum and St Catherine's tower and it becomes half a day. Save the tower climb for a clear day, when the view takes in the Main Town, the Motława and the shipyards.

It is worth asking when the carillon plays — the recitals carry across the square in front of the church, with no ticket needed. And for anyone who likes following the traces of particular people, this quarter rather than the Main Town is the Gdańsk of Johannes Hevelius.

How to get there and practical info

Location

central Gdańsk, Pomeranian Voivodeship — north of the Main Town, beyond Podwale Staromiejskie

Boundaries

the Motława to the south-east, Nowe Ogrody and Grodzisko to the west, the Young Town and shipyards to the north

Early history

a stronghold from the tenth century, chartered in 1223 and again before 1263, destroyed by the Teutonic Order in 1308, rechartered in 1377

What to see

the Great Mill with the Amber Museum, the Small Mill, St Catherine's church and its carillon, St Bridget's basilica, the Old Town Hall, the House of the Abbots of Pelplin

Heritage status

the quarter falls within the Historic Monument "Gdańsk — the city inside its seventeenth-century fortifications", designated by order of the President of Poland on 8 September 1994

Time needed

two hours on foot, half a day with the museums and the tower

Current opening times and tickets

website of the Museum of Gdańsk, which covers the Amber Museum in the Great Mill and the tower of St Catherine's

When to go