The Old Town (; ) is a quarter (osiedle) of Śródmieście, a district of Gdańsk. It is the oldest area of the city to be granted city rights or privileges.
History The Old Town was the location of a small fortified settlement by 970 and 980, and it comprised the majority and central section of the city of Gdańsk for much of its early history. In 1308, it was destroyed and burnt amidst the Gdańsk massacre, carried out by the Teutonic Order, slowly recovering, mostly as a suburb to the nearby Main City, which became the more important location in Gdańsk after 1308.
As of 1495, 3,655 people lived in the Old Town, which had increased to 31,250 by 1880 and 37,586 by 1917. The area was impoverished, and it suffered from significant destruction during the siege of Danzig in 1945. Some historical buildings, such as the Great Mill, were restored. Several commercial buildings, mostly shops and shopping malls, have been built in the Old Town since the 1980s.
Notable sights Notable sights in the Old Town include the historic , completed in the 16th century, the 14th-century Great Mill, the preserved medieval House of the Pelplin Abbots, the Polish Post Office, famously defended on 1 September 1939, as well as its museum, the early-20th-century Gdańsk Główny railway station, the Mannerist Preachers' House, the tall Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, the equestrian King John III Sobieski Monument, and the Radunia Canal, a 14th-century canal connecting two rivers, the Radunia and Motława.
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