Wroclaw
General informations about Wroclaw
Wroclaw - the capital of Lower Silesia situated upon the Odre River and its arms. The city is well known for its green areas and numerous bridges. Its historical cradle is the island called Ostrów Tumski with the Gothic St Cross' Cathedral, the Gothic St Mary's Church on the Piasek island and other precious temples. The medieval city centre with the Market Square and the City Hall, which date back to 14th and 15th centuries, remained the heart of the city. Wroclaw boasts many schools of higher education (e.g. the University, the Technical University), museums (the National Museum, the Museum of Architecture and Reconstruction, the Museum of Medals, the Museums of Post Offices and Telegraphs), galleries and theatres. Here you can visit the Ossolinski National Institute, transferred from Lviv, with the huge collection of old prints and manuscripts and the Raclawice Panorama - a monumental painting depicting the battle of Raclawice in 1794. Wroclaw is the city of congresses, fairs, symposiums and many other interesting cultural events (Wratislavia Cantans - a classical music festival, Jazz upon the Odre). Wroclaw is also the city of the European business.
Business traditions
From the start of its thousand-year history Wroclaw was a buoyant trade centre. The oldest preserved customs tariffs, statutes, and contracts document primarily contacts with Western Europe, which was the source of imported cloth, wine, and metal products. Imports from the East consisted mostly of furs, which were processed in Wroclaw and exported to the West. Beginning in the mid-19th century, Wroclaw started turning into a vibrant centre of all kinds of industry. Modern locomotives from the Linke-Hoffman works, steam tractors from Heckmann, and Ruffer's steam engines were products known and valued worldwide.
The end of World War Two marked the beginning of a new era in the city's economic history. Wroclaw became a pioneering centre of electronics and computing-machine manufacture. Computers made in Wroclaw were sold throughout the former Comecon, and also in West Germany, China, France, and Turkey. The city was a major centre of machine and electrical engineering industries and a pioneer in the production of household appliances, which in the 1970s were manufactured in cooperation with international partners, under licences from such Western companies as Gorenje, Blomberg, Philips, and Mastercook.
The early 1990s brought economic changes that resulted in the creation of new conditions for business activities and new opportunities for the inflow of foreign capital into Wroclaw. Numerous foreign investors have decided to team up with Polish businesses or purchase existing industrial facilities.
Plans for attracting new foreign investment to the city are geared towards the fulfilment of goals defined in the Wroclaw 2000 Plus city development strategy and focus primarily on creating jobs for highly skilled workforce, building up the image of the city as a meeting and exchange place, setting up a Financial Services Centre, and establishing Wroclaw as a major centre of the building and construction industry. An agreement on the establishment of Business Activity Zones (Northern, North-Eastern, and South-Western) has been signed with a view to facilitating the inflow of foreign direct investment to the city. Subject to meeting certain requirements, relating primarily to the scale of investment and the creation of new jobs, investors who decide to set themselves up in those zones will be exempted from real-estate tax.
Multicultural metropolis
Wroclaw (Wroclaw) is an excellent example of a multicultural metropolis situated at the interface of ethnically diverse areas. For a greater part of the city's history, German was the dominant language in Wroclaw (Wroclaw). However, for several generations the city was home to the Korn publishing house, which printed many books in Polish (250 titles between 1732 and 1790). Here the German playwright Karl Holtei staged a play about the Polish national hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko (Tadeus Kosciusko) in 1826. The Czechs have also played an important role in the city's history (in 1335- 1526 Wroclaw (Wroclaw) belonged to the Kingdom of Bohemia). As late as 1719, the great sculptor Johann Georg Urbanski (Urbanski) of Bohemia was given the key to the city.
Multiculturalism again left a very deep impress on the city's character after the Second World War, when the city's German population was largely replaced by people arriving from various regions of Poland, including those resettled from the eastern provinces of Poland taken over by the Soviet Union. In particular, many former citizens of Wilno (Vilnius) and Lwów (Lvov) settled here. With them came the great library collection of the Ossolinski (Ossolinski) Institution from Lwów (Lvov), which found a new location in the magnificent Baroque edifice of the former monastery of the Red Star Knights of the Cross. Two other works of unique significance for Polish culture were transferred from Lwów (Lvov): the statue of the leading Polish comic dramatist, Count Aleksander Fredro, and the Panorama of the Battle of Raclawice (Raclawice), a monumental painting representing the victorious battle with the Russian forces fought by Tadeusz Kosciuszko (Tadeus Kosciusko) on 4 April 1794, one of only several paintings of this kind to have survived in Europe until the present. It took over 35 years before it was possible to show the Panorama to the public, but today it is one of the city's most popular tourist attractions.
Info by Wroclaw.pl
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