ESSENTIAL CITY GUIDES
Europe’s leading publisher of locally produced city
guides
Free Download
Features
Links
This In Your Pocket Guide is available as
A Tale of Two Cities
You may know Wrocław by the old German name, Breslau. Especially if you're one of the many German nostalgia tourists who come to seek their roots. The Polish name Wrocław predates Breslau and is thought to be derived from the name of Czech sovereign Vratislav. Variants of the German name started appearing in documents shortly after Poland lost control of the region in 1335. Some sources claim that Frederick the Great changed the city's name to Breslau in 1741, though numerous documents suggest it was in use long before. With the German's expelled and Poland's borders shifted westwards, post-war Wrocław was re-populated with citizens from what is now the Ukrainian city of Lwów. The tens of thousands of migrants not only changed the ethnic make-up of the city, but its cultural life. Treasures taken from Lwów include the Fredro staute in the Rynek, the library collection from the Ossoliński Institute and the epic painting, the Racławica Panorama.
