Pheonix from the flames

Alex Webber - 25th October 2009

© Archivum Państwow The war reduced Gdańsk to rubble Share:

Gdańsk is one of Europe’s best kept secrets. Expecting a glum commie city? Think again. The Old Town captivates, and couldn’t look any sweeter if it was built by the good Mr Kipling and his little helpers. But while you’re bumbling round the cobbles and annoying the locals with your map flapping consider this; the spot you’re standing in was a smoking heap of rubble little more than 60 years ago. What looks like an ancient city borne of centuries of development is a ghost of what it once was, and still in the process of rediscovering itself.

This neck of the woods took a battering during WWII, with Poland losing twenty per cent of her pre-war population. Worse was to follow. The Yal ...