About This Location
This is a mobile audio guide in Gdańsk, a city shaped by the sea, trade, and shifting borders. A map in the app helps with navigation, and the audio starts automatically when GPS shows you have arrived at each spot. Keep your phone handy as the route continues from stop to stop. With that in mind, this first stop is a perfect introduction - a place where visitors have been “arriving” for centuries. Now focus on the building in front of you - Highland Gate, known in Polish as Brama Wyżynna. This was the main land entrance to Gdańsk and the formal start of the city’s Royal Route, the showpiece street used for grand arrivals. For centuries, official welcomes took place right here, including ceremonies for Polish kings entering the city. Look at the facade details. The first gate on this site was built in 1574 to 1575, and in 1588 it received its stone facing and sculpted decoration by Wilhelm van den Blocke, turning it into a proud Renaissance statement as well as a defensive checkpoint. Notice the heavy, rusticated stonework and the three-arch layout - a wide central passage for carts and two smaller side passages originally meant for pedestrians. Now lift your gaze to the attic at the top. The most eye-catching feature is the heraldic set of coats of arms that announced who ruled and who mattered here: Poland, Royal Prussia, and Gdańsk itself, carried by dramatic supporters. Above them, stone lions stand guard over the entrance, like silent sentries watching who comes and goes. Before moving on, glance around the surroundings. This gate once stood behind a moat and drawbridges, backed by earthworks and bastions that made entry tightly controlled - most of that military landscape disappeared in the late 1800s when embankments were removed and the moat was filled. Today the gate is part of the everyday flow of the city again, and it also hosts a tourist information center inside - a fitting modern role for the old “welcome point” of Gdańsk.