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.

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.

[13] Gdańsk has also topped rankings for the quality of life, safety and living standards worldwide, and its historic city centre has been listed as one of Poland's national monuments.

[19] 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[20] in 1228, Gdańsk in 1236,[b] Danzc in 1263, Danczk in 1311,[c] Danczik in 1399,[d] Danczig in 1414, and Gdąnsk in 1656.

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.

[33] Archaeological evidence for the origins of the town was retrieved mostly after World War II had laid 90 percent of the city centre in ruins, enabling excavations.

[33] 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.

[39] At latest in 1263 Pomerelian duke, Świętopełk II granted city rights under Lübeck law to the emerging market settlement.

[37] In a document of 1271 the Pomerelian duke Mestwin II addressed the Lübeck merchants settled in the city as his loyal citizens from Germany.

Primary sources record a massacre carried out by the Teutonic Order against the local population,[44] of 10,000 people, but the exact number killed is subject of dispute in modern scholarship.

[45] Multiple authors accept the number given in the original sources,[46] while others consider 10,000 to have been a medieval exaggeration, although scholarly consensus is that a massacre of some magnitude did take place.

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 Order tried to actively reduce the economic significance of the town.

The organisation in its complaint of 1453 mentioned repeated cases in which the Teutonic Order imprisoned or murdered local patricians and mayors without a court verdict.

[61] 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 her own coin.

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.

[77] The notable city councilor Jan (Johann) Uphagen, historian and art collector, also resigned as a sign of protest against the annexation.

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,[82] and insurgents of the November Uprising were also imprisoned in Biskupia Górka (Bischofsberg).

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.

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.

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.

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.

[104] 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.

Those who survived and could not escape had to face the Soviet Army, which captured the heavily damaged city on 30 March 1945,[113] followed by large-scale rape[114] and looting.

[115][116] 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.

[121][122][123] Nineteenth-century transformations were ignored as "ideologically malignant" by post-war administrations, or regarded as "Prussian barbarism" worthy of demolition,[124][125] while Flemish/Dutch, Italian and French influences were emphasized in order to "neutralize" the German influx on the general outlook of the city.

[131] 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.

[137] The city has moderately cold and cloudy winters with mean temperature in January and February near or below 0 °C (32 °F) and mild summers with frequent showers and thunderstorms.

This project's objective is to connect the city with the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanța with a 3,663 km (2,276 mi) long railway line passing through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.