Torun - is terrific

A Gothic cathedral and other huge churches in brick, a medieval town hall and tower in brick, a ruined Teutonic Knights’ castle in brick, city walls, granaries, burghers’ houses in brick – Torun in western Poland is a treasure trove of old red brick buildings. And one of the most attractive, intriguing and well-preserved Old Towns I have ever seen. (It is on UNESCO’s world heritage list.)

Expat friends in Warsaw had recommended Torun to us as a good weekend destination less than three hours by train west of Warsaw, and as a good window into the heart of historical Poland. We approached it across the prosperous flat farmland of Pomerania. As soon as we entered the Old Town and checked into our small hotel there (in a renovated ancient building), we fell in love with it. Torun was miraculously spared destruction by the Nazis and uglification by the “socialist realism” of the Communists. The brick architecture, including the elaborate gable ends of many of the old houses (typically four or five storeys) reminded me of the Low Countries (e.g. Bruges, Amsterdam). The architecture ranges from the severe to the ornate.

Torun's for those who like a charming, well-preserved medieval Old Town, not yet overrun by tourists

Although all the buildings are old, they are not frozen in time. Some of the stylistic makeovers that have occurred over the centuries enhance the appeal, such as the Renaissance embellishments on the 14C town hall tower, planted squarely in the middle of the Main Market Square, and the Gothic house of the Esher Family transformed into a granary in the 19C. Attractive transformation continues to this day. One of the top hotels (“Karczma Spichrz”) describes itself as consisting of “apartments in a 17C Bourgeois Tenement House”. The original structure has been left intact and meticulously restored, albeit with very modern facilities on the inside, and an atrium for the reception and elevator has been tastefully added to the exterior at the rear.

The streets in the Old Town are pedestrian only, and the city continues to invest in upgraded street surfaces consisting of cobble stones in the middle and stone sidewalks lined by miniature cobble stones. (I can’t recall seeing more attractive surfacing anywhere.) There are handsome old fashioned lamp posts, discreet business signs, and no overhead wires. Despite its coherent “old” appearance, the Old Town is far from being a tourist trap or “museum”. On the side streets, there are many ancient buildings that have not (yet) been restored. And the University just outside the Old Town (and occupying some of the buildings inside it), with its 30,000 students, ensures that there are lots of bars and clubs, many of which are in medieval cellars reached by stairs just off the sidewalks. When we were out and about on Saturday afternoon and evening, despite the chill in the air, many local people were strolling around, heading to shops or restaurants, or (in the case of students) pub-crawling. The ambiance is great, and one senses that the Old Town, and in particular its Main Market Square (where flower vendors were plying their trade late into the evening), is still very much the living heart of the city.

Although a lot of care has gone into its restoration in recent decades, and it clearly has a tourist vocation, we felt a little like pioneers, visiting Torun before international tourism “discovers” it. The city of 200,000 (most of whom live in relatively modern suburbs, which we did not see) is clearly aiming for more tourists. Posters announce Torun’s bid to be the City of European Culture in 2016.

Legends, traditions and oddities

Torun is also appealing because it has numerous quaint legends, traditions and oddities. It is famous (even among Varsovites we know who have never been there) for its gingerbread cookies (“pierniki”) which are made in all sorts of shapes - hearts being a favourite - and are attractively packaged, including in boxes we couldn’t resist looking like some of the historic houses. They are said to have been made since the town’s 13C founding, from a recipe that remains a secret. Our guidebook says improbably that the bakery is one of the town’s main employers.

On the main square near the old town hall is a charming statue of a boy (“Janko”) playing a violin, standing in a fountain whose rim contains a series of frogs, all in bronze. According to local legend, Janko overcame a witch’s curse on Torun - an invasion of frogs – by playing his fiddle and luring the frogs out into the woods. In the process he earned the prize offered by the mayor, a sackful of gold, and the mayor’s daughter.

One of the square (red brick) towers on the main fortifications, facing the river, is leaning at a crazy angle (the Polish Pisa). There it stands, without any sign or fanfare – and it seems to be inhabited on two floors!

Copernicus, famous native son

These days, Torun’s main claim to fame historically is as the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus. The formulator of the first modern heliocentric theory of the solar system (i.e. that the sun, rather than the Earth, is at the centre) was born here in 1473. His epochal text, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium/On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, is often conceived as the starting point of modern astronomy, as well as a central and defining landmark in the history of all science.

It turns out that our Mikołaj Kopernik (as he is known to the Poles) was among the great polymaths of the Scientific Revolution: he was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist, physician, classical scholar, Catholic cleric, governor, administrator, diplomat, and economist. Amid these extensive responsibilities, astronomy served as no more than an avocation.

The cathedral has the font where he was baptized, and the house where he was supposedly born is now a small museum which we visited, including replicas of his original astronomical wooden instruments, which looked primitive and yet were beyond my comprehension…There is a fine statue of him next to the old town hall, and his name pops up all over town.

Musical moments

It seems that a common element of our visits in Poland is unexpected and beautiful music. On Saturday evening, when dining in the “rustic” restaurant in the Hotel Karczma Spichrz, three musicians in period country outfits entertained us with traditional local music, playing accordion, double bass and clarinet. (The only piece we recognized was “If I Were a Rich Man”, from “Fiddler on the Roof”.)

On Sunday morning, as we peeked into the Cathedral of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, we were delighted by the children’s choir accompanied by the organ. At nearby St. Mary’s Church (another vast red-brick Gothic structure), the music we chanced upon was even more moving and charming – a young girl’s voice (amplified), again accompanied by organ, filled the church with sweet sound. (As on all other such occasions we have witnessed, both churches were full, with people of all ages.)

Torun’s economy

The Japanese are coming! Construction began recently on plants owned by Sharp and other major Japanese companies near Torun, and the expectation is that they will form a significant high-tech complex with the next few years, possibly providing as many as 10,000 jobs by 2010. Apparently, this is already boosting Torun’s real estate market. Fortunately, this is not yet seen in the prices paid by tourists – we were struck by how reasonably priced accommodation and meals were, about half of those in Warsaw.

Historical notes

Torun is on the Vistula River, which flows through Krakow way upstream, and then Warsaw, before entering the Baltic Sea near Gdansk. Its strategic location on Poland’s main river explains its early military and commercial development. It was developed as a military outpost in 1233 by the Teutonic Knights (described below), based in their fortress of Malbork, 100 km to the north. Torun’s commercial development was boosted in the 1280s when it joined the Hanseatic League,an alliance of tradingguilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea and most of Northern Europe between the 13C and 17C. (Other members included Stockholm, Visby, Hamburg, Lubeck, and Berlin, as well as Gdansk and Krakow in Poland.)

When the long struggle between Poland and the Teutonic Knights ended in 1466, it was the Treaty of Torun that finalized the peace. The treaty returned a long area of land to Poland, stretching from Torun to Gdansk. According to Wikipedia, the lack of customs borders on the Vistula after 1466 helped to gradually increase Polish grain exports, transported to the sea down the Vistula, from 10,000 tonnes per year in late 15C to over 200,000 tonnes in 17C. The Hansa-dominated maritime grain trade made Poland one of the main areas of its activity helping Gdansk/Danzig to become Hansa's largest city due to its control of Poland’s grain exports.

Torun’s ancient granaries attest to this time when Poland was the “breadbasket” of Western Europe. We have seen other of these grain storage depots further upstream on the Vistula, at Kazimierz Dolny, and many more in Gdansk, the centre of this lucrative trade. In fact, our hotel there was inside a restored granary.

Following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Torun became part of Prussian territory (i.e. once more under “Teutonic/German” domination). It only became part of Poland again under the Treaty of Versailles after WWI.

The Teutonic Knights were a Germanic military and religious order founded during the Crusades. When pagan Prussians, from what is now north-eastern Poland, attacked Poland in 1226, the Polish leader Duke Konrad of Mazovia called for help from the Teutonic Knights. Duke Konrad got good news and bad: the Teutonic Knights subdued the pagans all right, but they then decided to stay! And by force of arms, they occupied more and more territory over the decades, until they occupied all of northern Poland, from their stronghold at Malbork.

The beginning of the end for the Teutonic Knights came at the Battle of Grunwald (known to every Pole) when in 1410, the combined army of the Poles and Lithuanians devastated the army of the Teutonic Knights and killed their Grand Master, at reputedly the largest medieval battle in Europe, involving 70,000 troops.

The Teutonic Knights continued to dominate Torun until 1454 when the feisty inhabitants, upset by economic restrictions, attacked the Knights’ castle at the edge of the Old Town, overlooking the Vistula, and destroyed it - over three centuries before Parisians did the same to the Bastille. The ruins are clear evidence of a great downfall.

Torun by night

The main monuments, including the town hall and main square, the towers, and the city walls, come alive at night with their beautiful illuminations. Rounding out the romantic picture for us, there was a full moon, with a few wispy clouds for dramatic effect. We felt “swept away” in space and time as we walked along the bright red medieval walls overlooking the Vistula River flowing down to the Baltic, peacefully these days, and without its cargos of grain of yesteryear.

February 2007