Toruń

Toruń is a rarity in Poland: a Gothic old town that was not destroyed in the war, so what you see is not a reconstruction but the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century original. UNESCO-listed since 1997, and walkable in a day.

The town was founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1233 and grew rich as a Hanseatic port on the Vistula — hence the brick, hence the size of the town hall in the middle of the square. The ruins of the Teutonic castle stand at the edge of the old town; the citizens themselves pulled it down in 1454 when they broke with the order, and deliberately never rebuilt it.

Nicolaus Copernicus was born here in 1473. The house that the town has traditionally identified as his birthplace since the eighteenth century is now a museum, and the statue in front of the town hall is where everyone photographs themselves. More interesting than the house is the line the town has repeated for centuries: that he stopped the sun and moved the earth.

Gingerbread has been baked here since the Middle Ages and is not a souvenir but an industry: the Museum of Toruń Gingerbread occupies the 1885 Weese factory building and tells the trade's history, while at the Living Museum of Gingerbread (Rabiańska) you knead your own, as part of a show for children. The first has the real factory feel; the second is the better pick if you are travelling with them.