Gdansk district by district

The place called "Shout!"

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The place they call Shout!'Wrzeszcz' translates as 'shout!' or 'scream!' imperative, although its actual etymology is less exciting, being related to 'wrzos', or heather. The now fully urbanised terrain used to be a woody area with patches of heather-covered heathland, but the settlement goes long way back – to the Teutonic Knights' agricultural estates and even before them, the Pommeranian Piasts of 13th century. Modern Wrzeszcz developed in earnest in the late 19th and early 20th century, with the coming of the railways and the foundation of what is now Gdansk Technical University. The administrative division of Gdansk separates Wrzeszcz into the Lower and Upper (Dolny and ...Read More

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Old and Interesting: Srodmiescie & Oliwa

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A view of the city from the St Mary's tower Photo - Gdansk, Poland

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Gdansk is the city of half a million people and is administratively divided into 34 districts. A tourist on a brief (or even longer) sight-seeing visit will only come across some of them, as many are largely or exclusively residential. Others are out-of-the way but hide some gems worth pursuing by those who stay for longer. The two districts that even the brief visitors are likely to see are Srodmiescie and Oliwa.SRODMIESCIE The modern Srodmiescie (literally Mid-town) district of Gdansk is the very heart of the city and it's also where the majority of the tourist sites and sights is located. From the Dluga Street and Dlugi Targ (Long Market) with the fabulous restored, high-gab...Read More

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Where the river meets the sea

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Wyspa Sobieszewska Photo - Gdansk, Poland

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The two easternmost districts of Gdansk are Gorki Zachodnie i Krakowiec at the eastern end of Wyspa Portowa and, beyond there, Wyspa Sobieszewska. These mark a transition from the industrial wasteland in the harbour and harbour-surrounding districts to gentle pleasures of the Vistula Delta waterways. Gorki Zachodnie & KrakowiecKrakowiec is a sub-district of Gdansk located on the Port Island (Wyspa Portowa), between Stogi and Gorki Zachodnie. It is bordered by the Martwa Wisla branch of the Vistula delta but large parts of this stretch of the river are degraded by industrial development and thus the whole area has little to offer to a tourist. On the Wyspa Portowa better alt...Read More

The two easternmost districts of Gdansk are Gorki Zachodnie i Krakowiec at the eastern end of Wyspa Portowa and, beyond there, Wyspa Sobieszewska. These mark a transition from the industrial wasteland in the harbour and harbour-surrounding districts to gentle pleasures of the Vistula Delta waterways.

Gorki Zachodnie & Krakowiec

Krakowiec is a sub-district of Gdansk located on the Port Island (Wyspa Portowa), between Stogi and Gorki Zachodnie. It is bordered by the Martwa Wisla branch of the Vistula delta but large parts of this stretch of the river are degraded by industrial development and thus the whole area has little to offer to a tourist. On the Wyspa Portowa better alternatives are Gorki Zachodnie for sailing and the beach and Stogi for the beach.

Gorki Zachodnie (literally Western Hills) is the easternmost district of Gdansk before Wyspa Sobieszewska, but as the latter is separated from Wyspa Portowa on which Gorki Zachodnie sit by the wide expanse of the Wisla Smiala (you need to take a fairly round-about route to Sobieszewo), Gorki Zachodnie feel like the end of the town.

It's a very non-urban area, mostly covered by thin pine forest growing on the coastal sandy hills and is a location of several of the Gdansk yacht clubs as well as a small shipyard. I have a something of a sentimental attachment to Gorki Zachodnie as I used to come here both by land (a very long journey!) and by sea from Gdynia during my young sailing days. Sailing is pretty much the only reason why anybody would make their way to Gorki Zachodnie now, as it is a good starting point for exploring the waterways of Vistula Delta all the way to the Vistula Lagoon and south to the lakes.

WYSPA SOBIESZEWSKA

The truly easternmost district of Gdansk, and the largest, Wyspa Sobieszewska (Sobieszewo Island) doesn't feel like part of the city but rather a separate place of its own. The district is cut off from the rest of the city and the surrounding areas by the waterways of the Vistula Delta. In the north, it is bordered by the waters of the Bay of Gdansk, in the south the Martwa Wisla separates it from the Zulawy area, in the east Przekop Wisly divides it from Mikoszewo and in the west Wisla Smiala forms the border between the island and the district of Gorki Zachodnie.

I love Wyspa Sobieszewska although it's probably less special than I tend to think, with my perceptions coloured by the magic light of childhood holidays and other outings. It was only included in the Gdansk administrative borders in the 1970s and it still retains a lot of its village character. It also forms a link between the city and the waterways of the Vistula delta (the island literally sits between the two branches of that delta that empty its waters into the Baltic sea), through Wisla Krolewiecka to the Vistula Lagoon.

Sailing and motoring is good in this area, with plenty of nice places to stop overnight (though the mosquitoes are relentless).

The island itself owes its isolation and relative lack of development to poor transport links: there are only three ways to get there (the bridge over the Przegalina lock, the pontoon bridge in Sobieszewo and the Mikoszewo-Swibno ferry) and none of them can carry many cars.

The Island has several localities and tourist attractions of which the most important are the bird reserve Ptasi Raj in Gorki Wschodnie, the long, clean, sandy beach that stretches all the way from the reserve to the eastern end of the island at Swibno. The fishing villages are turning into residential suburbs, but the process is slower here than in other parts of the city and outside the high holiday season you can find strangely compelling peace, isolation and subtle beauty in many places on Wyspa Sobieszewska.

Not an A-list tourist area, but one that definitely merits exploration if you spend more time in and around Gdansk- you might find yourself falling in love with it. Read Less

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Shabby relics of Old Gdansk

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Relics of Old GdanskAlthough Srodmiescie (Town Centre) district houses most of the popular sightseeing attractions, the visitors interested in the more elusive, off the beaten track and atmospheric if sometimes rough and a bit unsavoury remains of Old Gdansk can find those relics in the small districts adjacent to the town centre and those stretching south of the city past the Brama Nizinna (the Lowland Gate) and along the Trakt Sw Wojciecha, once the main route entering the city from the south, leading to Tczew, Grudziadz, Torun and Lodz. ANIOLKILiterally 'Little Angels', Aniolki sit between Wrzeszcz (to the north) and Srodmiescie (to the south), separated by the r...Read More

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Industry and Shipping

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Most of the industrial districts of Gdansk are located around the vast harbour area to the north-east of the city. Majority of them have very little to offer to visitors, although there is an odd gem here and there: half-decent beaches at Stogi and Brzezno and an edgy art institute in the old Gdansk Shipyard.BRZEZNOOriginally a fishing village owned by the Oliwa Cistercian abbey and later on a seaside resort, Brzezno saw a development of communist-era housing estates of concrete blocks. Its proximity to the harbour district of Nowy Port and being surrounded by mostly industrial areas of Lower Wrzescz and Letnica meant that it was always a working-class district, albeit with a l...Read More

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Concrete sprawl by the sea

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Many residents of Gdansk live in the area of concrete sprawl bordered on one side by the waters of the Bay of Gdansk and on the other by the main Gdansk-Gdynia road and the railway. Counting down from the borders of Sopot, this area is divided administratively into Jelitkowo & Zabianka, Przymorze and Zaspa. Most visitors will not find themselves in those districts, unless connoisseurs of communist-era urban planning and architecture. They are not, overall, bad places to live and many prefer them to the newer estates that grow out of Gdansk inland towards Kashubia and Zulawy regions. JELITKOWOJelitkowo lies by the sea at the border of Gdansk and Sopot. Originally a fishing ...Read More

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Blocks, Blocks and more blocks

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These districts skirt the older parts of the city in a crescent of mostly communist era housing developments with very little to offer to a visitor. If you really must visit communist era block sprawl, Przymorze and Zaspa (covered in 'Concrete Sprawl by the Sea') is a better option.Piecki-MigowoPiecki-Migowo district is known more popularly among Gdansk inhabitants as Morena (the whole area is located on the upper terrace, about 100m above the sea level). It has been developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a gigantic area of housing estates (then filled with communist-style concrete blocks) and new estates (slightly prettier but still of soulless apartment blocks) are still raisi...Read More

These districts skirt the older parts of the city in a crescent of mostly communist era housing developments with very little to offer to a visitor. If you really must visit communist era block sprawl, Przymorze and Zaspa (covered in 'Concrete Sprawl by the Sea') is a better option.

Piecki-Migowo

Piecki-Migowo district is known more popularly among Gdansk inhabitants as Morena (the whole area is located on the upper terrace, about 100m above the sea level). It has been developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a gigantic area of housing estates (then filled with communist-style concrete blocks) and new estates (slightly prettier but still of soulless apartment blocks) are still raising. There is nothing for a tourist or a casual visitor to Gdansk here.

Suchanino

Located to the east of Piecki-Migowo, Suchanino is another part of the inner ring (not quite a full ring, but still) of communist era blocks that sit between the older residential and industrial districts of central Gdansk and the newly developed outlying areas that used to be countryside villages only thirty years ago.

Suchanino is no different from other estates of this sort like Morena (Piecki-Migowo) or new Chelm and has little to offer to a tourist. Its claim to fame is being the location of the legendary Burdl, (The Brothel), an indie rock music venue where a lot of bands loosely belonging to the Gdansk alternative scene in the 1980s and early 1990s played and socialised. The Burdl is no more, and thus Suchanino is a desert for visitors with no redeeming oases of interest.

Siedlce

This a relatively small district located along the Kartuska (Kartuzy Road), a street that extends west out of the centre of Gdansk towards Kashubia region. Siedlce have a fairly long history, but the pre-war buildings (predominantly wooden) mostly burned down in the last stages of the WW2. Most of Siedlce now consists of 1950s tenements along the main drag of Kartuska as well as some later communist era prefab concrete blocks. It's historically and currently a working-class area of no particular interest for visitors, though those hunting the relics of the old Gdansk will find some old tenement buildings and a mill complex dating to the 19th and early 20th century.

New Chelm

Chelm is by far the most populous district of Gdansk, housing close to 10% of the city's population. It is also a fairly extensive district, stretching south and south west of the centre of the city between Siedlce and Lostowice in the west and Orunia in the east, all the way to the Tri-city ring road.

Old Chelm has some interest for visitors, and is covered separately. New Chelm and nearby districts of the southern Gdansk are one, vast dormitory area of housing estates, many of them communist-era concrete prefab blocks dating to the 1970s and 1980s, others more modern developments. It's a popular area of Gdansk to live in, and with decent transport links (the main, mostly dual-carriageway road into the city skirts Chelm) but as far as tourists go it's a veritable desert. Read Less

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Boring dormitories that used to be countryside

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The districts covered in this chapter are among the least interesting for a leisure visitor to Gdansk. They are all residential areas, most of them heavily developed after the fall of communism, and although more desirable and slightly better looking than some of the inner-city communist-era estates, they often entail long commute times and have less infrastructure than older dormitory districts. OSOWAOsowa, only included within the administrative area of Gdansk in the 1970s is the northernmost district of the city and the only one that actually borders Gdynia. It is in fact located around 20km from the centre of the city and not very well connected by public transport. I...Read More

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