Trojmiasto — the "Tri-City" — is the Polish name for the urban strip of Gdansk, Sopot, and Gdynia stretching along the Baltic coast. The three cities have distinct characters but blend into one continuous conurbation, connected by commuter rail and an increasingly busy motorway.
Gdansk is the historic heavyweight, with its meticulously rebuilt Hanseatic Old Town — the Long Market is one of the most handsome squares in northern Europe — and the shipyard heritage that gave birth to the Solidarity movement. The European Solidarity Centre on the grounds of the old shipyard is among the finest museums in Poland, and Westerplatte, where the first shots of the Second World War were fired, is a genuinely moving memorial site. St. Mary's Church, one of the largest brick Gothic buildings in the world, anchors the Old Town.
Sopot in the middle is the Baltic resort, famous for the Sopot Pier — at 511 metres the longest wooden pier in Europe — and for summer nightlife along the Monciak pedestrian street. Gdynia, the youngest of the three, is a modernist port city built almost from scratch in the 1920s; its waterfront museum ships and well-preserved interwar architecture reward a half-day.
Getting from one end to the other takes about 40 minutes by SKM commuter train, making it easy to sample all three in a single trip.