History of Wrocław

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51 articles

Pstrąże - a ghost town left by a Soviet garrison

Historia Wrocławia

Pstrąże - a ghost town left by a Soviet garrison

In the Lower Silesian Forests, a small town of over ten thousand people existed for nearly half a century without appearing on any map. Today Pstrąże is ruins on the site of a closed military training ground.

Art Nouveau in Wrocław - tenement houses and details

Historia Wrocławia

Art Nouveau in Wrocław - tenement houses and details

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Art Nouveau left wrought balustrades, stucco work and women's faces in the ornamentation on Wrocław's facades. A little over a decade later it gave way to Modernism, but the detail can still be found on tenement houses in Przedmieście Oławskie and Nadodrze.

The seminary that trained 249 rabbis - a Jewish theological college in pre-war Wrocław

Historia Wrocławia

The seminary that trained 249 rabbis - a Jewish theological college in pre-war Wrocław

A bequest from a Wrocław merchant gave rise to a college that for 84 years trained rabbis of German Judaism and gave birth to the Conservative movement. Its graduates included Leo Baeck.

Where today's Wrocław residents came from - post-war resettlement and the Kresy Poles

Historia Wrocławia

Where today's Wrocław residents came from - post-war resettlement and the Kresy Poles

After 1945, Wrocław almost entirely replaced its population: the Germans were expelled, and their place was taken by resettlers from the Eastern Borderlands (Kresy), especially from Lviv, and by settlers from central Poland.

Sokołowsko: the Silesian Davos and Europe's first tuberculosis sanatorium

Historia Wrocławia

Sokołowsko: the Silesian Davos and Europe's first tuberculosis sanatorium

In a small village in the Suche Mountains, in 1855, the physician Hermann Brehmer opened a sanatorium that changed the way tuberculosis was treated across Europe and gave a model to the Swiss resort of Davos.

Synagogues of Lower Silesia: traces of Jewish heritage

Historia Wrocławia

Synagogues of Lower Silesia: traces of Jewish heritage

From brick houses of prayer in county towns, through Kristallnacht, to today's warehouses, shops and flats in former synagogues: how the fate of Jewish sacred architecture in Lower Silesia unfolded.

Srebrna Góra Fortress - the stronghold that was never taken

Historia Wrocławia

Srebrna Góra Fortress - the stronghold that was never taken

Built in a record twelve years, the fortress at Przełęcz Srebrna was meant to block the Austrians' route into Silesia. Its only serious assault, during the Napoleonic Wars in 1807, was cut short by the Peace of Tilsit - the fortress never had the chance to surrender.

The migrating glassworks of the Izera Mountains

Historia Wrocławia

The migrating glassworks of the Izera Mountains

Before permanent glass factories were built in the Sudetes, makeshift furnaces moved through the forests chasing wood and potash, leaving behind greenish forest glass and place names that still recall those times.

Lower Silesian inventors and scientists - Dzierżon, Wyżykowski and others

Historia Wrocławia

Lower Silesian inventors and scientists - Dzierżon, Wyżykowski and others

A priest who uncovered the secrets of bees, a geologist who was meant to become a clergyman, and an apothecary producing a deadly poison - Lower Silesia produced several researchers whose discoveries changed more than just local history.

Wałbrzych Basin: the history of hard coal mining

Historia Wrocławia

Wałbrzych Basin: the history of hard coal mining

For more than four hundred years coal decided the fate of Wałbrzych, from the first mentions in the 15th century, through thousands of employed miners, to the closure of the last mines in the early 1990s and the wildcat pits that followed it.

Castles of the Silesian Piasts: seats of the dynasty that ruled here longest

Historia Wrocławia

Castles of the Silesian Piasts: seats of the dynasty that ruled here longest

The Silesian Piasts ruled over more than a dozen duchies from 1138 to 1675, longer than any other line of the Piast dynasty in Poland. We show how one province became twenty duchies, why their rulers paid homage to Bohemia, and what remains of their castles.

Zgorzelec and Görlitz - one town on two sides of the river

Historia Wrocławia

Zgorzelec and Görlitz - one town on two sides of the river

Until 1945 Zgorzelec and Görlitz were a single town. The Nysa Łużycka cut it in two, and the bridges were reconnected only with Poland's entry into the Schengen area and years of rebuilding.

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Pieśni lasu | FKS

Pieśni lasu | FKS

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Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe (Sala Lwów)

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Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe (Sala Lalka)