Every design for Nowa Sól

By the Most podnoszony, the town's lifting bridge, you are standing in the middle of what made Nowa Sól: the Oder and the trade it carried. The town grew from a salt works founded in 1563 by Emperor Ferdinand I, refining sea salt from La Rochelle and the Iberian coast that came up the river from Hamburg and Stettin. Its German name, Neusalz, meant simply 'New Salt'.

That is what sets it apart: a town built not around a castle or a market but around a refinery, which later grew into one of the largest ports on the Silesian Oder. A flood in 1573 forced the salt works to move to nearby Modrzyca, and the administrator's office from that time is now the town hall. Frederick II of Prussia granted town rights in 1743, and in the nineteenth century thread and glue factories, an ironworks and a river shipyard followed. The Muzeum Miejskie w Nowej Soli keeps that working story, and the Pomnik Powodzianina honours those who lived through the floods.

Picture the Oder sliding past the old harbour, the bridge lifting for a passing boat, and the town hall that was once the salt office.