[02/26/2010] The Golden Gate (or, correctly, the Long Street Gate) marks the beginning of Gdansk's Dluga Street (Long Street) and the historical Royal Way (the official route which Polish kings, visiting Gdansk, took). It's an attractive building constructed in 1612 to replacing an older Gothic structure with a new and magnificent one in the Dutch mannerist style, designed by Abrahama van den Blocke. The gate is topped by gables and allegorical figures representing the burghers' goals (Peace, Freedom, Fortune, Fame) and civic virtues (Concord, Justice, Piety and Prudence). There are three passageway [more]

[02/26/2010] The park covers about 10 hectares (20 acres) and contains varied sections including formal avenues, Botanical Garden and palm houses, ponds and streams, Modern Sculpture Gallery, ethnographic museum, art gallery and one of Gdansk's registry office wedding venues (in the Abbot's Palace). This is a lovely park, with a surprising amount of variety for what is relatively small area. Different parts of the park has different character, with some darker parts and some parts more open and sunny, formal, topiary-cut trees along the avenue leading to the Palace, ponds with fish and fowl on them. Th [more]

[02/25/2010] The building that is The Great Mill (Wielki Mlyn) is a supremely attractive construction - built by the Teutonic Knights, it used to have more than a dozen great water wheels powering the mill stones. The location, by the Radunia canal in a picturesque, quiet spot to the side of the busiest parts of Gdansk's centre, is also very good. When you enter, though, it's a big anticlimax: inside there is a small shopping centre, a bit of a throwback to the beginnings of the Polish capitalism in the early 90s, a motley selection of small shops that should be boutiques but are more like stores found [more]