Audioguides Bydgoszcz

Bydgoszcz earned city rights in 1346 and grew wealthy where the Brda River meets the old grain-trade routes to the Vistula. The timber-framed granaries on Grodzka Street, three medieval warehouses reflected in the water, became the city's official symbols and the most photographed corner of what locals call the Wenecja, or 'little Venice'. For over a century under Prussian rule the city was known as Bromberg, and that Germanic past is still legible in the neo-baroque Hotel Pod Orlem built in 1896 and the grand Dutch Mannerist railway headquarters from 1886.

Today Bydgoszcz belongs to UNESCO's Creative Cities Network as a City of Music, a designation earned partly through the International Paderewski Piano Competition, named after the pianist and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski who studied here.

The city also hosts CAMERIMAGE, one of the world's foremost film cinematography festivals, which brings directors and cinematographers each November to a place they might never otherwise visit. The 830-hectare city park, one of Poland's largest, gives all of this culture ample breathing room.