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Gdańsk

Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdańsk lies at the mouth of the Motława River and is situated at the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay, close to the city of Gdynia and resort town of Sopot; these form a metropolitan area called the Tricity (Trójmiasto), with a population of approximately 1.5 million.

The city has a complex history, having had periods of Polish, German and self rule. An important shipbuilding and trade port since the Middle Ages, in 1361 it became a member of the Hanseatic League which influenced its economic, demographic and urban landscape. It also served as Poland's principal seaport, and was the largest city of Poland in the 15th-17th centuries. In 1793, within the Partitions of Poland, the city became part of Prussia, and thus a part of the German Empire from 1871 after the unification of Germany. Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, it was a Free City under the protection of the League of Nations from 1920 to 1939. On 1 September 1939 it was the scene of the first clash of World War II at Westerplatte. The contemporary city was shaped by extensive border changes, expulsions and new settlement after 1945. In the 1980s, Gdańsk was the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, which helped precipitate the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

Gdańsk is home to the University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, the National Museum, the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, the Museum of the Second World War, the Polish Baltic Philharmonic, the Polish Space Agency and the European Solidarity Centre. Among Gdańsk's most notable historical landmarks are the Town Hall, the Green Gate, Artus Court, Neptune's Fountain, and St. Mary's Church, one of the largest brick churches in the world. The city is served by Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport, the country's third busiest airport and the most important international airport in northern Poland.

Gdańsk is among the most visited cities in Poland, having received 3.4 million tourists according to data collected in 2019. The city also hosts St. Dominic's Fair, which dates back to 1260, and is regarded as one of the biggest trade and cultural events in Europe. Gdańsk has also topped rankings for the quality of life, safety and living standards worldwide, and its historic city center has been listed as one of Poland's national monuments.

Origin
The name of the city was most likely derived from Gdania, a river presently known as Motława on which the city is situated. Linguists argue that the name stems from the Proto-Slavic adjective/prefix gъd-, which meant wet or moist with the addition of the morpheme ń/ni and the suffix -sk.

History
The name of the settlement was recorded after St. Adalbert's death in 997 CE as urbs Gyddanyzc and it was later written as Kdanzk in 1148, Gdanzc in 1188, Danceke in 1228, Gdańsk in 1236, Danzc in 1263, Danczk in 1311, Danczik in 1399, Danczig in 1414, and Gdąnsk in 1656.

In Polish documents, the form Gdańsk was always used. The German form Danzig developed later, simplifying the consonant clusters to something easier for German speakers to pronounce. The cluster "gd" became "d" (Danzc from 1263), the combination "ns" became "nts" (Danczk from 1311)., and finally an epenthetical "i" broke up the final cluster (Danczik from 1399).

In Polish, the modern name of the city is pronounced. In English (where the diacritic over the "n" is frequently omitted) the usual pronunciation is or. The German name, Danzig, is usually pronounced, or alternatively in more Southern German-speaking areas. The city's Latin name may be given as either Gedania, Gedanum, or Dantiscum; the variety of Latin and German names typically reflects the difficulty of pronunciation of the Polish/Slavonic city's name, all German- and Latin/Romance-speaking populations always encounter in trying to pronounce the difficult and complex Polish/Slavonic words.

Ceremonial names
On special occasions, the city is also referred to as "The Royal Polish City of Gdańsk" (Polish: Królewskie Polskie Miasto Gdańsk, Latin: Regia Civitas Polonica Gedanensis, Kashubian: Królewsczi Pòlsczi Gard Gduńsk). In the Kashubian language the city is called Gduńsk. Although some Kashubians may also use the name "Our Capital City Gduńsk" (Nasz Stoleczny Gard Gduńsk) or "Our (regional) Capital City Gduńsk" (Stoleczny Kaszëbsczi Gard Gduńsk), the cultural and historical connections between the city and the region of Kashubia are debatable and use of such names rises controversy among Kashubians.

Ancient history
The oldest evidence found for the existence of a settlement on the lands of what is now Gdańsk comes from the Bronze Age (which is estimated to be from 2500–1700 BCE). The settlement that is now known as Gdańsk began in the 9th century, being mostly an agriculture and fishing-dependent village. In the beginning of the 10th century, it began becoming an important centre for trade (especially between the Pomeranians) until its annexation in c. 975 by Mieszko I.

Early Poland
The first written record thought to refer to Gdańsk is the vita of Saint Adalbert. Written in 999, it describes how in 997 Saint Adalbert of Prague baptised the inhabitants of urbs Gyddannyzc, "which separated the great realm of the duke [i.e., Bolesław the Brave of Poland] from the sea." No further written sources exist for the 10th and 11th centuries. Based on the date in Adalbert's vita, the city celebrated its millennial anniversary in 1997.

Archaeological evidence for the origins of the town was retrieved mostly after World War II had laid 90percent of the city centre in ruins, enabling excavations. The oldest seventeen settlement levels were dated to between 980 and 1308. Mieszko I of Poland erected a stronghold on the site in the 980s, thereby connecting the Polish state ruled by the Piast dynasty with the trade routes of the Baltic Sea. Traces of buildings and housing from the 10th century have been found in archaeological excavations of the city.

Pomeranian Poland
The site was ruled as a duchy of Poland by the Samborides. It consisted of a settlement at the modern Long Market, settlements of craftsmen along the Old Ditch, German merchant settlements around St Nicholas's church and the old Piast stronghold. In 1186, a Cistercian monastery was set up in nearby Oliwa, which is now within the city limits. In 1215, the ducal stronghold became the centre of a Pomerelian splinter duchy. At that time the area of the later city included various villages.

In 1224/25, merchants from Lübeck were invited as hospites (immigrants with specific privileges) but were soon (in 1238) forced to leave by Swietopelk II of the Samborides during a war between Swietopelk and the Teutonic Knights, during which Lübeck supported the latter. Migration of merchants to the town resumed in 1257. Significant German influence did not reappear until the 14th century, after the takeover of the city by the Teutonic Knights.

At latest in 1263 Pomerelian duke, Swietopelk II granted city rights under Lübeck law to the emerging market settlement. It was an autonomy charter similar to that of Lübeck, which was also the primary origin of many settlers. In a document of 1271 the Pomerelian duke Mestwin II addressed the Lübeck merchants settled in the city as his loyal citizens from Germany.

In 1300, the town had an estimated population of 2,000. While overall the town was far from an important trade centre at that time, it had some relevance in the trade with Eastern Europe. Low on funds, the Samborides lent the settlement to Brandenburg, although they planned to take the city back and give it to Poland. Poland threatened to intervene, and the Brandenburgians left the town. Subsequently, the city was taken by Danish princes in 1301.

Teutonic Knights

In 1308, the town was taken by Brandenburg and the Teutonic Knights restored order. Subsequently, the Knights took over control of the town. Primary sources record a massacre carried out by the Teutonic Knights against the local population, of 10,000 people, but the exact number killed is subject of dispute in modern scholarship. Multiple authors accept the number given in the original sources, while others consider 10,000 to have been a medieval exaggeration, although scholarly consensus is that a massacre of some magnitude did take place. The events were used by the Polish crown to condemn the Teutonic Knights in a subsequent papal lawsuit.

The knights colonized the area, replacing local Kashubians and Poles with German settlers. In 1308, they founded Osiek Hakelwerk near the town, initially as a Slavic fishing settlement. In 1340, the Teutonic Knights constructed a large fortress, which became the seat of the knights' Komtur. In 1346 they changed the Town Law of the city, which then consisted only of the Rechtstadt, to Kulm law. In 1358, Danzig joined the Hanseatic League, and became an active member in 1361. It maintained relations with the trade centres Bruges, Novgorod, Lisboa, and Sevilla. Around 1377, the Old Town was equipped with city rights as well. In 1380, the New Town was founded as the third, independent settlement.

After a series of Polish-Teutonic Wars, in the Treaty of Kalisz (1343) the Order had to acknowledge that it would hold Pomerelia as a fief from the Polish Crown. Although it left the legal basis of the Order's possession of the province in some doubt, the city thrived as a result of increased exports of grain (especially wheat), timber, potash, tar, and other goods of forestry from Prussia and Poland via the Vistula River trading routes, although after its capture, the Teutonic Knights tried to actively reduce the economic significance of the town. While under the control of the Teutonic Order German migration increased. The Order's religious networks helped to develop Danzig's literary culture. A new war broke out in 1409, culminating in the Battle of Grunwald (1410), and the city came under the control of the Kingdom of Poland. A year later, with the First Peace of Thorn, it returned to the Teutonic Order.

Kingdom of Poland

In 1440, the city participated in the foundation of the Prussian Confederation which was an organisation opposed to the rule of the Teutonic Knights. The organisation in its complaint of 1453 mentioned repeated cases in which the Teutonic Knights imprisoned or murdered local patricians and mayors without a court verdict. On the request of the organisation King Casimir IV of Poland reincorporated the territory to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. This led to the Thirteen Years' War between Poland and the State of the Teutonic Order (1454–1466). Since 1454, the city was authorized by the King to mint Polish coins. The local mayor pledged allegiance to the King during the incorporation in March 1454 in Kraków, and the city again solemnly pledged allegiance to the King in June 1454 in Elbląg, recognizing the prior Teutonic annexation and rule as unlawful. On 25 May 1457 the city gained its rights as an autonomous city.

On 15 May 1457, Casimir IV of Poland granted the town the Great Privilege, after he had been invited by the town's council and had already stayed in town for five weeks. With the Great Privilege, the town was granted full autonomy and protection by the King of Poland. The privilege removed tariffs and taxes on trade within Poland, Lithuania, and Ruthenia (present day Belarus and Ukraine), and conferred on the town independent jurisdiction, legislation and administration of her territory, as well as the right to mint its own coin. Furthermore, the privilege united Old Town, Osiek, and Main Town, and legalised the demolition of New Town, which had sided with the Teutonic Knights. By 1457, New Town was demolished completely, no buildings remained.

Gaining free and privileged access to Polish markets, the seaport prospered while simultaneously trading with the other Hanseatic cities. After the Second Peace of Thorn (1466) between Poland and the Teutonic Order the warfare ended permanently; Gdańsk became part of the Polish province of Royal Prussia, and later also of the Greater Poland Province. The city was visited by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1504 and 1526, and Narratio Prima, the first printed abstract of his heliocentric theory, was published there in 1540. After the Union of Lublin between Poland and Lithuania in 1569 the city continued to enjoy a large degree of internal autonomy (cf. Danzig law). Being the largest and one of the most influential cities of Poland, it enjoyed voting rights during the royal election period in Poland.

In the 1560s and 1570s, a large Mennonite community started growing in the city, gaining significant popularity. In the 1575 election to the Polish throne, Danzig supported Maximilian II in his struggle against Stephen Báthory. It was the latter who eventually became monarch but the city, encouraged by the secret support of Denmark and Emperor Maximilian, shut its gates against Stephen. After the Siege of Danzig, lasting six months, the city's army of 5,000 mercenaries was utterly defeated in a field battle on 16 December 1577. However, since Stephen's armies were unable to take the city by force, a compromise was reached: Stephen Báthory confirmed the city's special status and her Danzig law privileges granted by earlier Polish kings. The city recognised him as ruler of Poland and paid the enormous sum of 200,000 guldens in gold as payoff ("apology").

During the Polish–Swedish War of 1626–1629, in 1627, the naval Battle of Oliwa was fought near the city, and it is one of the greatest victories in the history of the Polish Navy. During the Swedish invasion of Poland of 1655–1660, commonly known as the Deluge, the city was unsuccessfully besieged by Sweden. In 1660, the war was ended with the Treaty of Oliwa, signed in the present-day district of Oliwa. In 1677, a Polish-Swedish alliance was signed in the city.

Around 1640, Johannes Hevelius established his astronomical observatory in the Old Town. Polish King John III Sobieski regularly visited Hevelius numerous times.

Beside a majority of German-speakers, whose elites sometimes distinguished their German dialect as Pomerelian, the city was home to a large number of Polish-speaking Poles, Jewish Poles, Latvian-speaking Kursenieki, Flemings, and Dutch. In addition, a number of Scots took refuge or migrated to and received citizenship in the city, with first Scots arriving in 1380. During the Protestant Reformation, most German-speaking inhabitants adopted Lutheranism. Due to the special status of the city and significance within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the city inhabitants largely became bi-cultural sharing both Polish and German culture and were strongly attached to the traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The city suffered a last great plague and a slow economic decline due to the wars of the 18th century. After peace was restored in 1721, Danzig experienced steady economic recovery. As a stronghold of Stanisław Leszczyński's supporters during the War of the Polish Succession, it was taken by the Russians after the Siege of Danzig in 1734. In the 1740s and 1750s Danzig was restored and Danzig port was again the most significant grain exporting in the Baltic region. The Danzig Research Society, which became defunct in 1936, was founded in 1743.

In 1772, the First Partition of Poland took place and Prussia annexed almost all of the former Royal Prussia, which became the Province of West Prussia. However, Gdańsk remained a part of Poland as an exclave separated from the rest of the country. The Prussian king cut off Danzig with a military controlled barrier, also blocking shipping links to foreign ports, on the pretense that a cattle plague may otherwise break out. Danzig declined in its economic significance. However, by the end of the 18th century, Gdańsk was still one of the most economically integrated cities in Poland. It was well-connected and traded actively with German cities, while other Polish cities became less well-integrated towards the end of the century, mostly due to greater risks for long-distance trade, given the number of violent conflicts along the trade routes.

Prussia and Germany
Danzig was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1793, in the Second Partition of Poland. Both the Polish and the German-speaking population largely opposed the Prussian annexation and wished the city to remain part of Poland. The mayor of the city stepped down from his office due to the annexation. The notable city councilor Jan (Johann) Uphagen, historian and art collector, also resigned as a sign of protest against the annexation. His house exemplifies Baroque in Poland and is now a museum, known as Uphagen's House. An attempted student uprising against Prussia led by Gottfried Benjamin Bartholdi was crushed quickly by the authorities in 1797.

During the Napoleonic Wars, in 1807, the city was besieged and captured by a coalition of French, Polish, Italian, Saxon, and Baden forces. Afterwards, it was a free city from 1807 to 1814, when it was captured by combined Prussian-Russian forces.

In 1815, after France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, it again became part of Prussia and became the capital of Regierungsbezirk Danzig within the province of West Prussia. Since the 1820s, the Wisłoujście Fortress served as a prison, mainly for Polish political prisoners, including resistance members, protesters, insurgents of the November and January uprisings and refugees from the Russian Partition of Poland fleeing conscription into the Russian Army, and insurgents of the November Uprising were also imprisoned in Biskupia Górka (Bischofsberg). In May–June 1832 and November 1833, more than 1,000 Polish insurgents departed partitioned Poland through the city's port, boarding ships bound for France, the United Kingdom and the United States (see Great Emigration).

The city's longest serving mayor was Robert von Blumenthal, who held office from 1841, through the revolutions of 1848, until 1863. With the unification of Germany in 1871 under Prussian hegemony, the city became part of the German Empire and remained so until 1919, after Germany's defeat in World War I. Starting from the 1850s, long-established Danzig families often felt marginalized by the new town elite originating from mainland Germany. This situation caused the Polish to allege that the Danzig people were oppressed by German rule and for this reason allegedly failed to articulate their natural desire for strong ties with Poland.

Free City of Danzig and World War II
When Poland regained its independence after World War I with access to the sea as promised by the Allies on the basis of Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" (point 13 called for "an independent Polish state", "which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea"), the Poles hoped the city's harbour would also become part of Poland. However, in the end – since Germans formed a majority in the city, with Poles being a minority (in the 1923 census 7,896 people out of 335,921 gave Polish, Kashubian, or Masurian as their native language) – the city was not placed under Polish sovereignty. Instead, in accordance with the terms of the Versailles Treaty, it became the Free City of Danzig, an independent quasi-state under the auspices of the League of Nations with its external affairs largely under Polish control. Poland's rights also included free use of the harbour, a Polish post office, a Polish garrison in Westerplatte district, and customs union with Poland. The Free City had its own constitution, national anthem, parliament, and government (Senat). It issued its own stamps as well as its currency, the Danzig gulden.

With the growth of Nazism among Germans, anti-Polish sentiment increased and both Germanisation and segregation policies intensified, in the 1930s the rights of local Poles were commonly violated and limited by the local administration. Polish children were refused admission to public Polish-language schools, premises were not allowed to be rented to Polish schools and preschools. Due to such policies, only eight Polish-language public schools existed in the city, and Poles managed to organize seven more private Polish schools.

In the early 1930s, the local Nazi Party capitalised on pro-German sentiments and in 1933 garnered 50% of vote in the parliament. Thereafter, the Nazis under Gauleiter Albert Forster achieved dominance in the city government, which was still nominally overseen by the League of Nations' High Commissioner.

In 1937, Poles who sent their children to private Polish schools were required to transfer children to German schools, under threat of police intervention, and attacks were carried out on Polish schools and Polish youth. German militias carried out numerous beatings of Polish activists, scouts and even postal workers, as "punishment" for distributing the Polish press. German students attacked and expelled Polish students from the technical university. Dozens of Polish surnames were forcibly Germanized, while Polish symbols that reminded that for centuries Gdańsk was part of Poland were removed from the city's landmarks, such as the Artus Court and the Neptune's Fountain.

From 1937, the employment of Poles by German companies was prohibited, and already employed Poles were fired, the use of Polish in public places was banned and Poles were not allowed to enter several restaurants, in particular those owned by Germans. In 1939, before the German invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II, local Polish railwaymen were victims of beatings, and after the invasion, they were also imprisoned and murdered in concentration camps.

The German government officially demanded the return of Danzig to Germany along with an extraterritorial (meaning under German jurisdiction) highway through the area of the Polish Corridor for land-based access from the rest of Germany. Hitler used the issue of the status of the city as a pretext for attacking Poland and in May 1939, during a high-level meeting of German military officials explained to them: "It is not Danzig that is at stake. For us it is a matter of expanding our Lebensraum in the east", adding that there will be no repeat of the Czech situation, and Germany will attack Poland at first opportunity, after isolating the country from its Western Allies.

After the German proposals to solve the three main issues peacefully were refused, German-Polish relations rapidly deteriorated. Germany attacked Poland on 1 September after having signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

The German attack began in Danzig, with a bombardment of Polish positions at Westerplatte by the German battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein, and the landing of German infantry on the peninsula. Outnumbered Polish defenders at Westerplatte resisted for seven days before running out of ammunition. Meanwhile, after a fierce day-long fight (1 September 1939), defenders of the Polish Post office were tried and executed then buried on the spot in the Danzig quarter of Zaspa in October 1939. In 1998 a German court overturned their conviction and sentence. The city was officially annexed by Nazi Germany and incorporated into the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia.

About 50 percent of members of the Jewish community had left the city within a year after a pogrom in October 1937. After the Kristallnacht riots in November 1938, the community decided to organize its emigration and in March 1939 a first transport to Palestine started. By September 1939 barely 1,700 mostly elderly Jews remained. In early 1941, just 600 Jews were still living in Danzig, most of whom were later murdered in the Holocaust. Out of the 2,938 Jewish community in the city, 1,227 were able to escape from the Nazis before the outbreak of war.

Nazi secret police had been observing Polish minority communities in the city since 1936, compiling information, which in 1939 served to prepare lists of Poles to be captured in Operation Tannenberg. On the first day of the war, approximately 1,500 ethnic Poles were arrested, some because of their participation in social and economic life, others because they were activists and members of various Polish organisations. On 2 September 1939, 150 of them were deported to the Sicherheitsdienst camp Stutthof some 30 mi from Danzig, and murdered. Many Poles living in Danzig were deported to Stutthof or executed in the Piaśnica forest.

During the war, Germany operated a prison in the city, an Einsatzgruppen-operated penal camp, a camp for Romani people, two subcamps of the Stalag XX-B prisoner-of-war camp for Allied POWs, and several subcamps of the Stutthof concentration camp within the present-day city limits.

In 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, eventually causing the fortunes of war to turn against Germany. As the Soviet Army advanced in 1944, German populations in Central and Eastern Europe took flight, resulting in the beginning of a great population shift. After the final Soviet offensives began in January 1945, hundreds of thousands of German refugees converged on Danzig, many of whom had fled on foot from East Prussia, some tried to escape through the city's port in a large-scale evacuation involving hundreds of German cargo and passenger ships. Some of the ships were sunk by the Soviets, including the MV Wilhelm Gustloff after an evacuation was attempted at neighbouring Gdynia. In the process, tens of thousands of refugees were killed.

The city also endured heavy Allied and Soviet air raids. Those who survived and could not escape had to face the Soviet Army, which captured the heavily damaged city on 30 March 1945, followed by large-scale rape and looting.

In line with the decisions made by the Allies at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the city became again part of Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. The remaining German residents of the city who had survived the war fled or were expelled to postwar Germany. The city was repopulated by ethnic Poles; up to 18 percent (1948) of them had been deported by the Soviets in two major waves from pre-war eastern Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union.

Post World War II (1945-1989)

In 1946, the communists executed 17-year-old Danuta Siedzikówna and 42-year-old Feliks Selmanowicz, known Polish resistance members, in the local prison.

The port of Gdańsk was one of the three Polish ports through which Greeks and Macedonians, refugees of the Greek Civil War, reached Poland. In 1949, four transports of Greek and Macedonian refugees arrived at the port of Gdańsk, from where they were transported to new homes in Poland.

Parts of the historic old city of Gdańsk, which had suffered large-scale destruction during the war, were rebuilt during the 1950s and 1960s. The reconstruction sought to dilute the "German character" of the city, and set it back to how it supposedly looked like before the annexation to Prussia in 1793. Nineteenth-century transformations were ignored as "ideologically malignant" by post-war administrations, or regarded as "Prussian barbarism" worthy of demolition, while Flemish/Dutch, Italian and French influences were emphasized in order to "neutralize" the German influx on the general outlook of the city.

Boosted by heavy investment in the development of its port and three major shipyards for Soviet ambitions in the Baltic region, Gdańsk became the major shipping and industrial centre of the People's Republic of Poland. In December 1970, Gdańsk was the scene of anti-regime demonstrations, which led to the downfall of Poland's communist leader Władysław Gomułka. During the demonstrations in Gdańsk and Gdynia, military as well as the police opened fire on the demonstrators causing several dozen deaths. Ten years later, in August 1980, Gdańsk Shipyard was the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement.

In September 1981, to deter Solidarity, Soviet Union launched Exercise Zapad-81, the largest military exercise in history, during which amphibious landings were conducted near Gdańsk. Meanwhile, the Solidarity held its first national congress in Hala Olivia, Gdańsk when more than 800 deputies participated. Its opposition to the Communist regime led to the end of Communist Party rule in 1989, and sparked a series of protests that overthrew the Communist regimes of the former Eastern Bloc.

Contemporary history (1990-present)
Solidarity's leader, Lech Wałęsa, became President of Poland in 1990. In 2014 the European Solidarity Centre, a museum and library devoted to the history of the movement, opened in Gdańsk.

On 9 July 2001, the city was flooded, with 200 million zł being estimated in damage, 4 people killed, and 304 evacuated. As a result, the city has built 50 reservoirs, the number of which is rising.

Gdańsk native Donald Tusk is Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and again from 2023 to present and was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. In 2014, the remains of Danuta Siedzikówna and Feliks Selmanowicz were found at the local Garrison Cemetery, and then their state burial was held in Gdańsk in 2016, with the participation of thousands of people from all over Poland and the highest Polish authorities.

In January 2019, the Mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, was assassinated by a man who had just been released from prison for violent crimes. After stabbing the mayor in the abdomen near the heart, the man claimed that the mayor's political party had been responsible for imprisoning him. Though Adamowicz underwent a multi-hour surgery, he died the next day.

In October 2019, the City of Gdańsk was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in the Concord category as a recognition of the fact that "the past and present in Gdańsk are sensitive to solidarity, the defense of freedom and human rights, as well as to the preservation of peace".

In a 2023 Report on the Quality of Life in European Cities compiled by the European Commission, Gdańsk was named as the fourth best city to live in Europe alongside Leipzig, Stockholm and Geneva.

Geography
Gdańsk lies at the mouth of the Motława river to the Martwa Wisła, a branch of the Vistula. It is located on the border between different physiographic regions: Vistula Spit (waterside part of the city), Vistula Fens (eastern part of the city), Kashubian Coastland (north-western part of the city) and Kashubian Lake District (western part of the city).

Climate
Gdańsk has a climate with both oceanic and continental influences. According to some categorizations, it has an oceanic climate (Cfb), while others classify it as belonging to the humid continental climate (Dfb). It actually depends on whether the mean reference temperature for the coldest winter month is set at -3 C or 0 C. Gdańsk's dry winters and the precipitation maximum in summer are indicators of continentality. However seasonal extremes are less pronounced than those in inland Poland.

The city has moderately cold and cloudy winters with mean temperature in January and February near or below 0 C and mild summers with frequent showers and thunderstorms. Average temperatures range from -1.0 to 17.2 C and average monthly rainfall varies 17.9 to 66.7 mm per month with a rather low annual total of 507.3 mm. In general, the weather is damp, variable, and mild.

The seasons are clearly differentiated. Spring starts in March and is initially cold and windy, later becoming pleasantly warm and often increasingly sunny. Summer, which begins in June, is predominantly warm but hot at times with temperature reaching as high as 30 to 35 C at least couple times a year with plenty of sunshine interspersed with heavy rain. Gdańsk averages 1,700 hours of sunshine per year. July and August are the warmest months. Autumn comes in September and is at first warm and usually sunny, turning cold, damp, and foggy in November. Winter lasts from December to March and includes periods of snow. January and February are the coldest months with the temperature sometimes dropping as low as -15 C.

Economy

The industrial sections of the city are dominated by shipbuilding, petrochemical, and chemical industries, as well as food processing. The share of high-tech sectors such as electronics, telecommunications, IT engineering, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals is on the rise.

Amber processing is also an important part of the local economy, as the majority of the world's amber deposits lie along the Baltic coast. The Pomeranian Voivodeship, including Gdańsk, is also a major tourist destination in the summer, as millions of Poles and other European tourists flock to the beaches of the Baltic coastline.

Major companies based in Gdańsk include multinational clothing company LPP, Energa, Remontowa, the Gdańsk Shipyard, Elektrociepłownie Wybrzeże, Polnord Energobudowa, Ziaja, and BreakThru Films. The city also served as a major base for Grupa Lotos, with the Gdańsk Refinery having been the second-largest in Poland with a capacity of 210000 oilbbl/d.

Gdańsk also hosts the biennial BALTEXPO International Maritime Fair and Conference, the largest fair dedicated to the maritime industry in Poland.

The largest shopping centers located in the city include: Forum Gdańsk, Galeria Bałtycka, Alfa Centrum Gdańsk, CH Manhattan, Galeria Handlowa Madison, Galeria Zaspa and Park Handlowy Matarnia.

In 2021, the registered unemployment rate in the city was estimated at 3.6%.

Architecture
The city has some buildings surviving from the time of the Hanseatic League. Most tourist attractions are located in the area of the Main City of Gdańsk, along or near Ulica Długa (Long Street) and Długi Targ (Long Market), a pedestrian thoroughfare surrounded by buildings reconstructed in historical (primarily during the 17th century) style and flanked at both ends by elaborate city gates. This part of the city is sometimes referred to as the Royal Route, since it was once the path of processions for visiting Kings of Poland.

Walking from end to end, sites encountered on or near the Royal Route include:
 * Highland Gate (Brama Wyżynna), which marks the beginning of the Royal Route
 * Torture House (Katownia) and Prison Tower (Wieża więzienna), now housing the Amber Museum (Muzeum Bursztynu)
 * Mansion of the Society of Saint George (Dwór Bractwa św. Jerzego)
 * Golden Gate (Złota Brama)
 * Ulica Długa ("Long Lane"), filled with picturesque tenements
 * Uphagen's House (Dom Uphagena), branch of the Museum of Gdańsk
 * Lion's Castle (Lwi Zamek)
 * Main Town Hall (Ratusz Głównego Miasta, built 1378–1492)
 * Długi Targ ("Long Market")
 * Artus' Court (Dwór Artusa)
 * Neptune's Fountain (Fontanna Neptuna), a masterpiece by architect Abraham van den Blocke, 1617. It is the oldest working fountain in Poland.
 * New Jury House (Nowy Dom Ławy), in which the seemingly 17th-century Maiden in the Window appears every day during the tourist season, referring to a popular novel Panienka z okienka ("Maiden in the Window") by Jadwiga Łuszczewska, set in 17th-century Gdańsk
 * Golden House (Złota Kamienica), a distinctive Renaissance townhouse from the early 17th century, decorated with numerous reliefs and sculptures
 * Green Gate (Zielona Brama), a Mannerist gate, built as a formal residence of Polish kings, now housing a branch of the National Museum in Gdańsk
 * Olivia Business Centre, a district made up of six buildings
 * Olivia Star is the tallest building in North Poland. It was finished in 2018 and measures at 512 Feet.

Gdańsk has a number of historical churches, including St. Catherine's Church and St. Mary's Church (Bazylika Mariacka). This latter is a municipal church built during the 15th century, and is the largest brick church in the world.

The city's 17th-century fortifications represent one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii), as designated on 16 September 1994 and tracked by the National Heritage Board of Poland.

Other main sights in the historical city centre include:
 * Royal Chapel of the Polish King John III Sobieski
 * Żuraw – medieval port crane
 * Gradowa Hill
 * Granaries on the Ołowianka and Granary Islands
 * Great Armoury
 * John III Sobieski Monument
 * Old Town Hall
 * Jan Heweliusz Monument
 * Great Mill (1350)
 * Small Mill
 * Mariacka Street
 * House of Research Society
 * Polish Post Office, site of the 1939 battle
 * brick gothic town gates, i.e., Mariacka Gate, Straganiarska Gate, Cow Gate

Main sights outside the historical city centre include:
 * Abbot's Palace in the Oliwa Park
 * Lighthouse in Nowy Port
 * Oliwa Cathedral
 * Pachołek Hill – an observation point in Oliwa
 * Pier in Brzeźno
 * Medieval city walls
 * Westerplatte
 * Wisłoujście Fortress
 * Gdańsk Zoo

Museums

 * National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe)
 * Department of Ancient Art – contains a number of important artworks, including Hans Memling's Last Judgement
 * Green Gate
 * Department of Modern Art – in the Abbot's Palace in Oliwa
 * Ethnography Department – in the Abbot's Granary in Oliwa
 * Gdańsk Photography Gallery
 * Historical Museum (Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Gdańska):
 * Main Town Hall
 * Artus' Court
 * Uphagen's House
 * Amber Museum (Muzeum Bursztynu)
 * Museum of the Polish Post (Muzeum Poczty Polskiej)
 * Wartownia nr 1 na Westerplatte
 * Museum of Tower Clocks (Muzeum Zegarów Wieżowych)
 * Wisłoujście Fortress
 * National Maritime Museum, Gdańsk (Narodowe Muzeum Morskie):
 * Żuraw Crane
 * Granaries in Ołowianka
 * museum ship SS Sołdek is anchored on the Motława River and was the first ship built in post-war Poland.
 * European Solidarity Centre. Museum and library dedicated to the history of the Solidarity movement.
 * Archeological Museum (Muzeum Archeologiczne)
 * Gdańsk Nowy Port Lighthouse (Latarnia Morska Gdańsk Nowy Port)
 * Izba Pamięci Wincentego Pola w Gdańsku-Sobieszewie
 * Archdiocese Museum (Muzeum Archidiecezjalne)
 * Museum of the Second World War

Entertainment

 * Polish Baltic Philharmonic
 * Baltic Opera
 * Teatr Wybrzeże
 * Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre is a Shakespearean theatre built on the historical site of a 17th-century playhouse where English travelling players came to perform. The new theatre, completed in 2014, hosts the annual Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival.

Transport

 * Gdańsk Główny station 1.jpg]]Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport – an international airport located in Gdańsk;
 * The Szybka Kolej Miejska, (SKM) the Fast Urban Railway, functions as a Metro system for the Tricity area including Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia, operating frequent trains to 27 stations covering the Tricity. The service is operated by electric multiple unit trains at a varying frequency.
 * Railways: The principal station in Gdańsk is Gdańsk Główny railway station, served by both SKM local trains and PKP long-distance trains. In addition, long-distance trains also stop at Gdańsk Oliwa railway station, Gdańsk Wrzeszcz railway station, Sopot, and Gdynia. Gdańsk also has nine other railway stations, served by local SKM trains;
 * Long-distance trains are operated by PKP Intercity which provides connections with all major Polish cities, including Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, Poznań, Katowice, Szczecin, and Częstochowa, and with the neighbouring Kashubian Lakes region.

Between 2011 and 2015, the Warsaw-Gdańsk-Gdynia railway route underwent a major upgrade. The project cost $3 billion and was partly funded by the European Investment Bank. The upgrades included track replacement, realignment of curves and relocation of sections of track to allow speeds up to 200 km/h, modernization of stations, and installation of the most modern ETCS signalling system, which was completed in June 2015. In December 2014, new Alstom Pendolino high-speed trains were put into service between Gdańsk, Warsaw and Kraków reducing the rail travel time from Gdańsk to Warsaw to 2 hours 58 minutes, further reduced in December 2015 to 2 hours 39 minutes.
 * A new railway, Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna (PKM, the 'Pomeranian Metropolitan Railway'), commenced service on 1 September 2015, connecting Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport with Wrzeszcz and downtown Gdańsk. It connects to the Szybka Kolej Miejska (Tricity) (SKM) which provides further connections to the entire area served by SKM.

 * City buses and trams are operated by ZTM Gdańsk (Zarząd Transportu Miejskiego w Gdańsku).
 * From 1 October 2018 selected circuits of line 31 from PKT Gdynia go to bus stop Sopot Ergo Arena without trolley pole. Small part of this rote passes through Gdańsk.
 * Port of Gdańsk – a seaport located on the southern coast of Gdańsk Bay within the city;
 * Obwodnica Trojmiejska – part of expressway S6 that bypasses the cities of Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia.
 * The A1 motorway connects the port and city of Gdańsk with the southern border of the country., some fragments of the A1 motorway are still incomplete.

Gdańsk is the starting point of the EuroVelo 9 cycling route which continues southward through Poland, then into the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovenia before ending at the Adriatic Sea in Pula, Croatia.

Additionally, Gdańsk is part of the Rail-2-Sea project. This project's objective is to connect the city with the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanța with a 3,663 km long railway line passing through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Sport
There are many popular professional sports teams in the Gdańsk and Tricity area. The city's professional football club is Lechia Gdańsk. Founded in 1945, they play in the Ekstraklasa, Poland's top division. Their home stadium, Stadion Miejski, was one of the four Polish stadiums to host the UEFA Euro 2012 competition, as well as the host of the 2021 UEFA Europa League Final. Other notable football clubs are Gedania 1922 Gdańsk and SKS Stoczniowiec Gdańsk, which both played in the second tier in the past.

Other notable clubs include:
 * Speedway club Wybrzeże Gdańsk;
 * Rugby club Lechia Gdańsk;
 * Handball club GKS Wybrzeże Gdańsk;
 * Ice hockey club Stoczniowiec Gdańsk;
 * Volleyball club Trefl Gdańsk.

The city's Hala Olivia was a venue for the official 2009 EuroBasket, and the Ergo Arena was one of the 2013 Men's European Volleyball Championship, 2014 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship and 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships venues.

Politics and local government
Contemporary Gdańsk is one of the major centres of economic and administrative life in Poland. It has been the seat of a Polish central institution, the Polish Space Agency, several supra-regional branches of further central institutions such as the Energy Regulatory Office, the Office of Electronic Communications, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Office of Rail Transport and the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, as well as the supra-regional (appellate-level) institutions of justice: the Court of Appeals, the Regional Public Prosecutor's Office, and the branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. As the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship it has been the seat of the Pomeranian Voivodeship Office, the Sejmik, and the Marshall's Office of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and other voivodeship-level institutions.

Regional centre
Gdańsk Voivodeship was extended in 1999 to include most of former Słupsk Voivodeship, the western part of Elbląg Voivodeship and Chojnice County from Bydgoszcz Voivodeship to form the new Pomeranian Voivodeship. The area of the region was thus extended from 7394 to 18293 km² and the population rose from 1,333,800 (1980) to 2,198,000 (2000). By 1998, Tricity constituted an absolute majority of the population; almost half of the inhabitants of the new region live in the centre.

Municipal government
Legislative power in Gdańsk is vested in a unicameral Gdańsk City council (Rada Miasta), which comprises 34 members. Council members are elected directly every four years. Like most legislative bodies, the City Council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government.

 * City Council in 2024–2029:

 * KO (15)
 * PO (9)
 * iPL (1)
 * Ind. (5)
 * WDG (11)
 * WDG (10)
 * NL (1)
 * PiS (8)
 * PiS (6)
 * Ind. (2)

Districts
Gdańsk is divided into 34 administrative divisions: 6 dzielnicas and 28 osiedles. A full list can be found at Districts of Gdańsk, but the largest include Śródmieście, Przymorze Wielkie, Chełm, Wrzeszcz Dolny, and Wrzeszcz Górny.

Education and science

There are 15 higher schools including three universities. Notable educational institutions include the University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, and Gdańsk Medical University. The city is also home to the Baltic Institute.

Twin towns – sister cities
Gdańsk is twinned with:

 * Helsingør, Denmark
 * 🇩🇪 Bremen, Germany
 * 🇺🇸 Cleveland, United States
 * 🇸🇪 Kalmar, Sweden

 * 🇫🇷 Nice, France
 * 🇰🇿 Astana, Kazakhstan

 * Rotterdam, Netherlands
 * Sefton, United Kingdom
 * 🇫🇮 Turku, Finland
 * 🇱🇹 Vilnius, Lithuania

Former twin towns

 * 🇷🇺 Kaliningrad, Russia
 * 🇷🇺 Saint Petersburg, Russia

On 3 March 2022, Gdańsk City Council passed a unanimous resolution to terminate the cooperation with the Russian cities of Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Partnerships and cooperation
Gdańsk also cooperates with:
 * 🇧🇪 Ghent, Belgium
 * 🇫🇷 Le Havre, France
 * 🇫🇷 Marseille, France
 * 🇺🇦 Odesa, Ukraine

World Scout Jamboree
The city was chosen as the location for the 26th World Scout Jamboree set to take place July 27, 2027 – August 6, 2027.

Demographics

The 1923 census conducted in the Free City of Danzig indicated that of all inhabitants, 95% were German, and 3% were Polish and Kashubian. The end of World War II is a significant break in continuity with regard to the inhabitants of Gdańsk.

German citizens began to flee en masse as the Soviet Red Army advanced, composed of both spontaneous flights driven by rumors of Soviet atrocities, and organised evacuation starting in the summer of 1944 which continued into the spring of 1945. Approximately 1% (100,000) of the German civilian population residing east of the Oder–Neisse line perished in the fighting prior to the surrender in May 1945. German civilians were also sent as "reparations labour" to the Soviet Union.

Poles from other parts of Poland replaced the former German-speaking population, with the first settlers arriving in March 1945. On 30 March 1945, the Gdańsk Voivodeship was established as the first administrative Polish unit in the Recovered Territories. As of 1 November 1945, around 93,029 Germans remained within the city limits. The locals of German descent who declared Polish nationality were permitted to remain; as of 1 January 1949, 13,424 persons who had received Polish citizenship in a post-war "ethnic vetting" process lived in Gdańsk.

The settlers can be grouped according to their background:
 * Poles that had been freed from forced labor in Nazi Germany
 * Repatriates: Poles expelled from the areas east of the new Polish-Soviet border. This included assimilated minorities such as the Polish-Armenian community
 * Poles incl. Kashubians relocating from nearby villages and small towns
 * Settlers from central Poland migrating voluntarily
 * Non-Poles forcibly resettled during Operation Vistula in 1947. Large numbers of Ukrainians were forced to move from south-eastern Poland under a 1947 Polish government operation aimed at dispersing, and therefore assimilating, those Ukrainians who had not been expelled eastward already, throughout the newly acquired territories. Belarusians living around the area around Białystok were also pressured into relocating to the formerly German areas for the same reasons. This scattering of members of non-Polish ethnic groups throughout the country was an attempt by the Polish authorities to dissolve the unique ethnic identity of groups like the Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Lemkos, and broke the proximity and communication necessary for strong communities to form.
 * Jewish Holocaust survivors, most of them Polish repatriates from the Eastern Borderlands.
 * Greeks and Slav Macedonians, refugees of the Greek Civil War.

title: Gdańsk


text:
Graviton

In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical quantum of gravity, an elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitational interaction. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathematical problem with renormalization in general relativity. In string theory, believed by some to be a consistent theory of quantum gravity, the graviton is a massless state of a fundamental string.

If it exists, the graviton is expected to be massless because the gravitational force has a very long range, and appears to propagate at the speed of light. The graviton must be a spin-2 boson because the source of gravitation is the stress–energy tensor, a second-order tensor (compared with electromagnetism's spin-1 photon, the source of which is the four-current, a first-order tensor). Additionally, it can be shown that any massless spin-2 field would give rise to a force indistinguishable from gravitation, because a massless spin-2 field would couple to the stress–energy tensor in the same way gravitational interactions do. This result suggests that, if a massless spin-2 particle is discovered, it must be the graviton.

Theory
It is hypothesized that gravitational interactions are mediated by an as yet undiscovered elementary particle, dubbed the graviton. The three other known forces of nature are mediated by elementary particles: electromagnetism by the photon, the strong interaction by gluons, and the weak interaction by the W and Z bosons. All three of these forces appear to be accurately described by the Standard Model of particle physics. In the classical limit, a successful theory of gravitons would reduce to general relativity, which itself reduces to Newton's law of gravitation in the weak-field limit.

History
Albert Einstein discussed quantized gravitational radiation in 1916, the year following his publication of general relativity. The term graviton was coined in 1934 by Soviet physicists Dmitry Blokhintsev and Fyodor Galperin. Paul Dirac reintroduced the term in a number of lectures in 1959, noting that the energy of the gravitational field should come in quanta. A mediation of the gravitational interaction by particles was anticipated by Pierre-Simon Laplace. Just like Newton's anticipation of photons, Laplace's anticipated "gravitons" had a greater speed than the speed of light in vacuum $$c$$, the speed of gravitons expected in modern theories, and were not connected to quantum mechanics or special relativity, since these theories didn't yet exist during Laplace's lifetime.

Gravitons and renormalization
When describing graviton interactions, the classical theory of Feynman diagrams and semiclassical corrections such as one-loop diagrams behave normally. However, Feynman diagrams with at least two loops lead to ultraviolet divergences. These infinite results cannot be removed because quantized general relativity is not perturbatively renormalizable, unlike quantum electrodynamics and models such as the Yang–Mills theory. Therefore, incalculable answers are found from the perturbation method by which physicists calculate the probability of a particle to emit or absorb gravitons, and the theory loses predictive veracity. Those problems and the complementary approximation framework are grounds to show that a theory more unified than quantized general relativity is required to describe the behavior near the Planck scale.

Comparison with other forces
Like the force carriers of the other forces (see photon, gluon, W and Z bosons), the graviton plays a role in general relativity, in defining the spacetime in which events take place. In some descriptions energy modifies the "shape" of spacetime itself, and gravity is a result of this shape, an idea which at first glance may appear hard to match with the idea of a force acting between particles. Because the diffeomorphism invariance of the theory does not allow any particular space-time background to be singled out as the "true" space-time background, general relativity is said to be background-independent. In contrast, the Standard Model is not background-independent, with Minkowski space enjoying a special status as the fixed background space-time. A theory of quantum gravity is needed in order to reconcile these differences. Whether this theory should be background-independent is an open question. The answer to this question will determine the understanding of what specific role gravitation plays in the fate of the universe.

Energy and wavelength
While gravitons are presumed to be massless, they would still carry energy, as does any other quantum particle. Photon energy and gluon energy are also carried by massless particles. It is unclear which variables might determine graviton energy, the amount of energy carried by a single graviton.

Alternatively, if gravitons are massive at all, the analysis of gravitational waves yielded a new upper bound on the mass of gravitons. The graviton's Compton wavelength is at least $6 eV/c2$, or about 1.6 light-years, corresponding to a graviton mass of no more than $1.6 m$. This relation between wavelength and mass-energy is calculated with the Planck–Einstein relation, the same formula that relates electromagnetic wavelength to photon energy.

Experimental observation
Unambiguous detection of individual gravitons, though not prohibited by any fundamental law, is impossible with any physically reasonable detector. The reason is the extremely low cross section for the interaction of gravitons with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one graviton every 10 years, even under the most favorable conditions. It would be impossible to discriminate these events from the background of neutrinos, since the dimensions of the required neutrino shield would ensure collapse into a black hole.

LIGO and Virgo collaborations' observations have directly detected gravitational waves. Others have postulated that graviton scattering yields gravitational waves as particle interactions yield coherent states. Although these experiments cannot detect individual gravitons, they might provide information about certain properties of the graviton. For example, if gravitational waves were observed to propagate slower than c (the speed of light in vacuum), that would imply that the graviton has mass (however, gravitational waves must propagate slower than c in a region with non-zero mass density if they are to be detectable). Recent observations of gravitational waves have put an upper bound of $7.7 eV/c^{2}$ on the graviton's mass. Astronomical observations of the kinematics of galaxies, especially the galaxy rotation problem and modified Newtonian dynamics, might point toward gravitons having non-zero mass.

Difficulties and outstanding issues
Most theories containing gravitons suffer from severe problems. Attempts to extend the Standard Model or other quantum field theories by adding gravitons run into serious theoretical difficulties at energies close to or above the Planck scale. This is because of infinities arising due to quantum effects; technically, gravitation is not renormalizable. Since classical general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to be incompatible at such energies, from a theoretical point of view, this situation is not tenable. One possible solution is to replace particles with strings. String theories are quantum theories of gravity in the sense that they reduce to classical general relativity plus field theory at low energies, but are fully quantum mechanical, contain a graviton, and are thought to be mathematically consistent.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Graviton


text:
Göta Canal

The Göta Canal (Göta kanal) is a Swedish canal constructed in the early 19th century. The canal is 190 km long, of which 87 km were dug or blasted, with a width varying between 7 – and a maximum depth of about 3 m. The speed is limited to 5 knots in the canal.

The Göta Canal is a part of a waterway 390 km long, linking a number of lakes and rivers to provide a route from Gothenburg (Göteborg) on the west coast to Söderköping on the Baltic Sea via the Trollhätte kanal and Göta älv river, through the large lakes Vänern and Vättern. This waterway was dubbed as Sweden's Blue Ribbon (Sveriges blå band). Contrary to the popular belief it is not correct to consider this waterway as a sort of greater Göta Canal: the Trollhätte Canal and the Göta Canal are completely separate entities.

History
The idea of a canal across southern Sweden was first put forward as early as 1516, by Hans Brask, the bishop of Linköping. However, it was not until the start of the 19th century that Brask's proposals were put into action by Baltzar von Platen, a German-born former officer in the Swedish Navy. He organised the project and obtained the necessary financial and political backing. His plans attracted the enthusiastic backing of the government and the new king, Charles XIII, who saw the canal as a way of kick-starting the modernisation of Sweden. Von Platen himself extolled the modernising virtues of the canal in 1806, claiming that mining, agriculture and other industries would benefit from "a navigation way through the country."

The project was inaugurated on 11 April 1810 with a budget of 24 million Swedish riksdalers. It was by far the greatest civil engineering project ever undertaken in Sweden up to that time, taking 22 years of effort by more than 58,000 workers. Much of the expertise and equipment had to be acquired from abroad, notably from Britain, whose canal system was the most advanced in the world at that time. The Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford, renowned for his design of the Caledonian Canal in Scotland, developed the initial plans for the canal and travelled to Sweden in 1810 to oversee some of the early work on the route. Many other British engineers and craftsmen were imported to assist with the project, along with significant quantities of equipment - even apparently mundane items such as pickaxes, spades and wheelbarrows.

The Göta Canal was officially opened on 26 September 1832. Von Platen himself did not live to see the completion of the canal, having died shortly before its opening. However, the return on investment for the canal didn't live up to the hopes of the government. Bishop Hans Brask's original justifications for the canal's construction were the onerous Sound Dues imposed by Denmark–Norway on all vessels passing through the narrow Øresund channel between Sweden and Denmark and the trouble with the Hanseatic League. The canal enabled vessels travelling to or from the Baltic Sea to bypass the Øresund and so evade the Danish toll. In 1851, the tycoon André Oscar Wallenberg founded the Company for Swedish Canal Steamboat Transit Traffic to carry goods from England to Russia via the canal. However, it only ran two trips between St Petersburg and Hull via Motala before the Crimean War halted Anglo-Russian trade. After the war ended, the great powers pressured Denmark into ending the four-hundred-year-old tradition of the Sound Dues, thus eliminating at a stroke the canal's usefulness as an alternative to the Øresund.

The arrival of the railways in 1855 quickly made the canal redundant, as trains could carry passengers and goods far more rapidly and did not have to shut down with the arrival of winter, which made the canal impassable for five months of the year. By the 1870s, the canal's goods traffic had dwindled to just three major types of bulk goods - forest products, coal and ore, none of which required rapid transportation. Traffic volumes stagnated after that and never recovered.

The canal had one major industrial legacy in the shape of Motala Verkstad - a factory established in Motala to produce the machines such as cranes and steam dredgers that were needed to build the canal. This facility has sometimes been referred to as the "cradle of the Swedish engineering industry". After the canal was opened, Motala Verkstad focused on producing equipment, locomotives and rolling stock for the newly constructed railways, beginning a tradition of railway engineering that continues to this day in the form of AB Svenska Järnvägsverkstädernas Aeroplanavdelning (ASJA) that was bought by the aeroplane manufacturer SAAB in Linköping.

Description
These days the canal is primarily used as a tourist and recreational attraction. Around two million people visit the canal each year on pleasure cruises - either on their own boats or on one of the many cruise ships - and related activities. The canal sometimes is ironically called the "divorce ditch" (skilsmässodiket) because of the troubles that inexperienced couples have to endure while trying to navigate the narrow canal and the many locks by themselves.

Locks
The canal has 58 locks and can accommodate vessels up to 30 m long, 7 m wide and 2.8 m in draft.

From the east-coast of Sweden to Lake Vänern the locks are as follows (with meters of height difference per lock):

 * Mem, 3
 * Tegelbruket, 2.3
 * Söderköping, 2.4
 * Duvkullen nedre, 2.3
 * Duvkullen övre, 2.4
 * Mariehov nedre, 2.1
 * Mariehov övre, 2.6
 * Carlsborg nedre, 5.1
 * Carlsborg övre, 4.7
 * Klämman, open
 * Hulta, 3.2
 * Bråttom, 2.3
 * Norsholm, 0.8
 * Carl Johans slussar (seven locks), 18.8
 * Oskars slussar, 4.8
 * Karl Ludvig Eugéns slussar, 5.5
 * Brunnby, 5.3
 * Heda, 5.2
 * Borensberg, 0.2
 * Borenshult, 15.3
 * Motala, 0.1

Lake Vättern (88 m above sea level)

 * Forsvik, 3.5

Lake Viken (92 m above sea level – canal's highest point)

 * Tåtorp, 0.2
 * Hajstorp övre, 5.0
 * Hajstorp nedre, 5.1
 * Riksberg, 7.5
 * Godhögen, 5.1
 * Norrkvarn övre, 2.9
 * Norrkvarn nedre, 2.9
 * Sjötorp 7-8, 4.6
 * Sjötorp 6, 2.4
 * Sjötorp 4-5, 4.8
 * Sjötorp 2-3, 4.8
 * Sjötorp 1, 2.9

After Lake Vänern (44 m above sea level) Trollhätte kanal to Gothenburg and the west-coast of Sweden.

Bibliography and references

 * Eric de Maré, Swedish Cross Cut, Sweden, 1965. (In English)

title: Göta Canal