Explore Gdańsk

The Long Market is the broad market street of Gdańsk's Main Town, running from the Main Town Hall to the Green Gate on the Motława as part of the Royal Route. It is lined with rebuilt merchant houses, among them the Golden House and Artus Court; in front of the court stands Neptune's Fountain, a bronze statue cast in 1615 and set up in 1633.

Artus Court on the Long Market was built in 1348–1350 as the meeting hall of Gdańsk's merchant brotherhoods and rebuilt after a fire in 1476–1477; its Mannerist façade dates from 1617. The Great Hall has Gothic vaults on slender pillars, ship models, paintings and a 10.64 m tiled stove of 520 tiles. It is a branch of the Museum of Gdańsk.

The Main Town Hall stands where Long Lane meets the Long Market. Enlarged in 1379–1382, it gained its Renaissance spire with a gilded statue of King Sigismund II Augustus after a fire in 1556. Burned in 1945 and rebuilt, it has housed the city's history museum since 1970, with the decorated Red Hall; the tower gallery opens in summer.

St. Mary's Church is a Brick Gothic co-cathedral in Gdańsk's Main Town, begun in 1343 and vaulted by 1502, and one of the largest brick churches ever built. Inside are star and crystal vaults on 26 pillars, a 15th-century astronomical clock whose figures move daily at 11:57, and altars and epitaphs; the 82 m tower has a viewing platform.

The Gdańsk Crane is a 15th-century port crane and city gate on the Motława embankment, built in its present form in 1442–1444 between two brick towers. Men walking inside its large wooden treadwheels lifted cargo and raised ships' masts. Rebuilt after damage in 1945, it is a branch of the National Maritime Museum with an exhibition on the medieval port.

The National Museum in Gdańsk shows its Department of Early Art in a late-Gothic former Franciscan monastery on Toruńska Street, beside Holy Trinity Church. The collection's centrepiece is Hans Memling's triptych The Last Judgment of 1467–1471; the galleries also hold Dutch and Flemish paintings, Gdańsk furniture, goldsmiths' work and pewter.

The Polish Post Office Museum occupies the building where Polish postal workers held out for about 15 hours against German forces on 1 September 1939; 38 of the defenders were later sentenced and shot on 5 October 1939. Its exhibition, reopened in October 2026, covers the defence, the Polish community in the Free City of Danzig and the defenders' families.

The Museum of the Second World War is a state museum in Gdańsk, established in 2008 and opened in 2017 in a building by the Kwadrat studio, marked by a leaning red tower. Its main exhibition lies underground and follows the war from the 1930s to its aftermath, covering the invasion of Poland, occupation, the Holocaust and civilian life.

The European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk is a museum and library on the history of the Solidarity trade union and other opposition movements in communist Eastern Europe. Its rust-coloured building by FORT Architects, recalling ship hulls, opened on 31 August 2014 beside Gate No. 2 of the shipyard, with a permanent exhibition and a roof terrace.

Westerplatte is a peninsula at the harbour entrance of Gdańsk, site of the Polish Military Transit Depot from 1926. The Second World War began here on 1 September 1939, when a German battleship shelled the depot; its garrison of about 200 held out until 7 September. Visitors see barracks ruins, guardhouses, a cemetery and the 1966 Monument to the Coast Defenders.