Poland is a country in Central Europe, a broad land of plains, forests, and lakes stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian Mountains. With a thousand-year history as a nation, it has known both greatness, as one of Europe's largest powers, and tragedy, erased from the map entirely for over a century and devastated in the twentieth. Today it is a populous, fast-growing member of the European Union and a country fiercely proud of its endurance.
The Polish state was born around the year 966, when its first historical ruler, Mieszko I, adopted Christianity and brought his realm into the European fold. Medieval Poland grew strong under kings such as Casimir the Great, and its union with Lithuania created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous states in Europe. Internal weakness then led to a catastrophe: in the late eighteenth century Poland was carved up by its neighbours and vanished from the map for 123 years.
A founding legend tells of three brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus, the forefathers of the Polish, Czech, and Russian peoples. Lech, the story goes, came upon a white eagle nesting against a red sunset and founded his settlement, Gniezno, on the spot, taking the white eagle as his emblem. The tale charmingly explains the national symbol and the kinship of the Slavs, but the brothers are figures of legend rather than history, even as the white eagle remains Poland's coat of arms.
Poland is mostly low and flat, part of the great North European Plain, which made it both rich in farmland and tragically easy to invade. Forests, including ancient woodlands sheltering rare wildlife, and thousands of lakes dot the north, while the land rises to the Sudeten and the high Tatra Mountains along the southern border. The Vistula, the country's great river, winds north through historic cities to the Baltic coast.
The flag of Poland could hardly be simpler: two equal horizontal bands, white above red. The colours come from the national coat of arms, a white eagle on a red field, with white set above red by the rules of heraldry. Despite, or because of, its simplicity, the white and red are a deeply felt emblem of a nation that clung to its identity through long periods when it had no state of its own.
Poland is one of the most devoutly Roman Catholic countries in Europe, and the faith has been bound up with national identity for a thousand years, often serving as a refuge for Polishness when the state itself was gone. That bond was embodied by Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow who became Pope John Paul II, whose moral authority helped inspire the movement that toppled communism. Catholic tradition still shapes the country's culture and public life.
Polish cuisine is warm and filling, suited to cold winters. Its best-loved dish is pierogi, soft dumplings stuffed with anything from potato and cheese to meat or fruit. Hearty soups, sausages such as kielbasa, and bigos, a rich hunter's stew of cabbage and meat, are staples, often accompanied by rye bread and pickled vegetables. The food reflects a culture of generous hospitality and the rhythm of the agricultural seasons.
Poland has a strong agricultural tradition and is one of the leading farming nations in the European Union. Its plains produce abundant grain, potatoes, and sugar beet, and the country is the largest apple producer in Europe, a major exporter of poultry, and a significant source of dairy and other fruits and vegetables. Family farms remain common, and food is an important part of both the rural economy and Polish exports across the continent.
Poland's history turns on dramatic events: its baptism in 966, the great victory over the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410, and King John III Sobieski's rescue of Vienna from an Ottoman siege in 1683. The partitions erased the country for over a century. The twentieth century brought the horror of the Second World War, which began with the invasion of Poland and saw the Holocaust carried out on its soil, followed by communist rule and the Solidarity movement that helped end it.
Poland has a population of around 37 million people, ethnically and religiously homogeneous after the upheavals of the twentieth century, the great majority Polish and Catholic. The population is highly urban, centred on cities such as the capital Warsaw, rebuilt from near-total destruction after the war, and the historic former royal capital of Krakow. In recent years Poland has shifted from a country of emigration to one drawing migrants, including large numbers from neighbouring Ukraine.
