Every design for Toruń

Toruń is known for gingerbread, for Copernicus and for an Old Town that came through the Second World War almost untouched. Its Brick Gothic streets on the Vistula are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and were named one of the Seven Wonders of Poland.

The feeling the city leaves behind is one of continuity. First settled in the eighth century and expanded by the Teutonic Knights, it was a Hanseatic town for well over a century and later a royal city of Poland, one of its four largest. Its gingerbread-baking tradition goes back nearly a thousand years. It even served briefly as the temporary Polish capital in the time of the Duchy of Warsaw. Around the medieval core runs a ring of forts, from Fort IV Stanisława Żółkiewskiego to Fort XI Stefana Batorego, and the Centrum Popularyzacji Kosmosu „Planetarium – Toruń” honours the astronomer born here.

Today it is the city of the Camerimage film festival and of a famously high quality of life. However far you move, the view of the old town from across the Vistula is the one that says: you're back.