Toruń — Gothic, Copernicus and gingerbread on the Vistula.

Toruń is a medieval city of brick Gothic that came through the wars without major damage — and so has kept its authentic street plan, its townhouses, granaries and churches from the Hanseatic era. In 1997 the old town was added to the UNESCO list as one of the most completely preserved Gothic ensembles in this part of Europe.

It was here in 1473 that Nicolaus Copernicus was born — the astronomer who „stopped the Sun and moved the Earth”. The city keeps that memory alive: his surviving family house, the monument on the old town market square and the Nicolaus Copernicus University.

The second pillar of the city's identity is Toruń gingerbread — baked here since the Middle Ages, a delicacy with more than 700 years of tradition and its own museums (the Museum of Toruń Gingerbread and the interactive Living Museum of Gingerbread among them), where you can bake your own to an old recipe.

Another emblem is the Leaning Tower — a Gothic tower in the town walls, visibly out of true. The old town is ringed by surviving stretches of the defensive walls and the ruins of the Teutonic castle, and it is all tied together by the view from the far bank of the Vistula — one of the most famous panoramas in Poland.

Getting there: from Warsaw about 2.5–3 hours by train, and about 2.5–3 hours by car (A1/DK10). Toruń lies halfway between Warsaw and the Tricity, so it works well as a stop on a longer journey. The old town is compact and easily covered on foot.