Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour from Gdańsk's Old Town to the gate of the shipyard where Solidarity began, about a kilometre to the north. It starts at the Market Hall and the Basilica of St Nicholas, built for the Dominicans, who came to Gdańsk in 1227, with the octagonal Jacek Tower, the Old Town Hall of 1587 to 1595 and the seated bronze of the astronomer Jan Hevelius. Along the Radunia Canal come the House of the Abbots of Pelplin, the Great Mill, built by the Teutonic Knights with eighteen water wheels, St Catherine's, the Old Town's parish church, the Little Mill and St Bridget's. The walk ends with the twentieth century: the Polish Post Office, Poland's postal and telegraph office in the Free City of Danzig, the leaning tower of the Museum of the Second World War, opened in 2017 with its main exhibition fourteen metres underground, the three 42-metre crosses of the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, Gate No. 2, decorated by the strikers in August 1980, the European Solidarity Centre and the BHP Hall. Cruise ships berth at Gdynia, about twenty kilometres away, where the ship's own excursion or shuttle is the safer choice.
16 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 98 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 44 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Market Hall, St Nicholas' Basilica, Jacek Tower, Old Town Hall, Hevelius Monument.
House of the Abbots of Pelplin, Great Mill, St Catherine's Church, Little Mill, St Bridget's Church.
Polish Post Office, Museum of the Second World War, Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, Gate No. 2, European Solidarity Centre, BHP Hall.
The Dominicans' red-brick Gothic hall church, its three naves under a starry vault on ten octagonal pillars.
The Teutonic Knights' mill of the mid-fourteenth century, set on an island in the Radunia Canal so water drove eighteen wheels.
The Old Town's parish church, a Gothic hall Protestant from 1525 until 1945, whose tower holds the Museum of Tower Clocks.
Polish Post and Telegraph Office No. 1, Poland's postal service inside the Free City of Danzig, in a former garrison hospital.
Three steel crosses 42 metres high for the workers killed in December 1970, a strikers' demand in August 1980, unveiled that December.
The shipyard gate the strikers decorated with religious images and a portrait of John Paul II in August 1980.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 16 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 16 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Gdańsk — the Old Town and the Shipyard of Solidarity, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
16 narration points, including Market Hall, St Nicholas' Basilica, Jacek Tower, Old Town Hall and Hevelius Monument. That is about 25 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 16 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.