,
UNESCO World Heritage Site and
Historic Monument of Poland • There are two
spa towns in the province:
Sopot and
Ustka. • The provincial capital of
Gdańsk was the largest city of Poland for over 250 years, from the mid-15th century to the early 18th century, when it was surpassed by the national capital of
Warsaw. Gdańsk has five sites listed as
Historic Monuments of Poland, a joint record with
Kraków, including its historic city center. • There are numerous castles in the province, and the
Kwidzyn and
Malbork castles are listed as
Historic Monuments of Poland, with the latter also designated a
UNESCO World Heritage Site. • The longest wooden pier in Europe, the
Sopot Pier, is located in the voivodeship. • In 1380, the first Scots settled in Gdańsk, founding what would eventually become a significant
Scottish diaspora in Poland, and later on, Scots also lived in
Chojnice,
Czarne,
Człuchów,
Debrzno,
Gniew,
Kościerzyna,
Puck,
Starogard Gdański,
Tczew. The
Stare Szkoty neighbourhood of Gdańsk is named after the Scottish settlers. • One of the three parish churches of the
Armenian Catholic Church in Poland is located in Gdańsk (see also:
Armenians in Poland). • The voivodeship features several places where major international treaties were signed in the past, i.e. the
Dano-Polish truce of 1458 and Polish-
Swedish alliance of 1677, both signed in Gdańsk, the Polish-Swedish truces of 1629 and 1635 signed in
Stary Targ and
Sztumska Wieś, respectively, and the
peace treaty ending the
Second Northern War of 1655–1660. •
Sztutowo is the location of the former
Stutthof concentration camp, the first Nazi German concentration camp established outside of pre-war Germany during
World War II. • The
Westerplatte peninsula in Gdańsk was the site of the
Battle of Westerplatte, the first battle of the German
invasion of Poland and
World War II, and is now designated a
Historic Monument of Poland. • During World War II, the
Stalag II-B and
Stalag XX-B major
prisoner-of-war camps for Polish, British,
French, Belgian, Serbian, Dutch, Soviet, Italian, American, Australian, New Zealander, Canadian, Senegalese, Malagasy, Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian and other
Allied POWs were operated in the territory by Nazi Germany. There are cemeteries of the POWs at the sites in
Czarne and
Malbork. • There are numerous memorials at the sites of Nazi massacres of Poles from World War II, including the largest massacres in
Piaśnica,
Szpęgawsk and
Chojnice. • The Pomeranian Voivodeship is one of four first-level administrative divisions containing the name of the region of Pomerania, the other being the neighbouring West Pomeranian Voivodeship and Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland, and
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany. == References ==