Every design for Chojnice

Chojnice sits on the edge of the Tuchola Forest, the largest town anywhere near that great stretch of woodland, some 120 kilometres south-west of Gdańsk. Daily life here has a crossroads feel: trains leave for Brodnica, Kościerzyna, Piła, Szczecinek and Tczew, and the town is the natural centre for the villages and forests around it.

What sets Chojnice apart is its stubborn streak. Founded around 1205, it held out as the last Teutonic town in Gdańsk Pomerania until a three-month siege in 1466 handed it to the Polish army, and under Prussian rule its high school, one of the oldest in Poland, became a centre of Polish youth resistance to Germanisation. It was a busy cloth-making town, too. The Gothic Kościół pw. Ścięcia Świętego Jana Chrzciciela went up in the fourteenth century, and the Muzeum Historyczno-Etnograficzne im. Juliana Rydzkowskiego w Chojnicach keeps the region's story; there is even a bench, the Ławeczka Juliana Rydzkowskiego, for the man the museum is named after.

Walk in through the Brama Człuchowska, the old town gate, and the market square opens up in front of you, with the old town gathered around it.