Photos by Bernadeta Galus
Walking down the streets, it is easy to notice that Gdansk is a maritime city. Ornaments in a shape of a ship, sea animals or even entire port scenes are common. Restaurants are design in style of a port tavern, shops offer sea related items. The most precious of them is amber and silver or gold jewellery: Gdansk has been famous for it for centuries.
The history of many buildings has been connected with sea matters: there was the Pile Tax Office located in the Main City Town Hall (the pile tax was a mooring duty on goods imported and exported by sea), the neighbouring Arthur’s Court served as a meeting place for merchants and sailors and then as a stock exchange. The Neptune’s fountain in front of Arthur’s Court was a tribute to the antique god of seas.
Chapels in many churches have been devoted to patron saints taking care of people working at sea. One of the most recent is the Stella Maris (Sea Star - the name of Virgin Mary) Chapel, founded in 1980 at St Mary’s Basilica by Andrzej Bohomolec, a sailor whose voyage onboard a small, 3-person yacht to Chicago in 1933 is recognized as an important achievement in history of Polish sailing.
